The Claim Jumper: The Labors of Darius Linard, #1

By Leah Cutter

Since Darius's dad died, he now mines a single arc of the New Athens asteroid belt all by himself. 

However, suddenly, all the boundary markers that designate his claim go offline. 

Can Darius defend the arc of the asteroid belt that he calls home? Before the claim jumper steals everything? 

Be sure to read the additional adventures of Darius in issues one and three of Boundary Shock Quarterly, as well as published separately. 

The Claim Jumper
Wild One
Runaways
Homecoming
Hero

• Language: English
• Publisher: Knotted Road Press
• Release date: May 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386328025

Leah Cutter

Leah Cutter--a Crawford Award Finalist--writes page-turning fiction in exotic locations, such as New Orleans, ancient China, the Oregon coast, ancient Japan, rual Kentucky, Seattle, Minneapolis, Budapest, etc.  Find more fiction by Leah Cutter at www.KnottedRoadPress.com. Follow her blog at www.LeahCutter.com.

Book preview

Part I

DARIUS SENT OUT THE CALL signal again.

PleaseOhPleaseOhPlease!

He kissed two fingers then reached up and touched the silver medal welded to the center of the ceiling for luck, a habit as automatic as breathing. The side facing out had an image of Jason of the Argonauts, while the side snug against the cabin had the golden fleece.

The cold silence of space replied to Darius’ signal.

None of the boundary markers responded.

Godsdamn it.

One or two boundary markers not responding could be anything. Space debris, mechanical failure, a short in the electronics, whatever. Hell, an entire line could have been wiped out from the ice shed of a recent comet. His claim was in the outer third of the asteroid belt, after all.

None of the boundary markers responding?

That meant a claim jumper squatting in the single degree of arc of the New Athens’ asteroid belt that Darius called home.

Sweat trickled down the back of Darius’ light T-shirt. His new pants itched—he’d bought them during his last station call since he’d shot up another two inches and outgrown his previous set. Again. At eighteen was taller than his dad too, just shy of two meters.

Darius rotated the three-dimensional space map splashed across the tiny front window of his spaceship, then he overlaid it with a map of where the boundary markers were supposed to be.

If he was a claim jumper, where would he hide? Inside Darius’ claim, or outside of it?

Orion—his little mining ship—could barely map out the asteroids in the claim: its sensors were at least twenty years too old. A ship with any kind of stealth protection (particularly something exotic from, oh, say, the Xi Lien system) would be completely hidden from him. He’d have to stumble on it in real time, see it with his bare eyes.

Would the claim jumper hide behind Big Bertha, the largest asteroid in this section and the only hunk of rock that supported an actual mine shaft? Or would he lay low near the dust field, caused by a collision of two asteroids that had happened when Darius’ dad had first claimed the area over forty years ago?

Gods, his dad would know. Darius missed him again with a great fierceness.

Stupid debris. Stupid suit malfunction. Stupid warning signal that had gone off inside Orion far too late for Darius to save his dad.

Geez, it hadn’t even been a month since his dad had passed. And now, Darius was going lose his father’s claim.

Where was that asshole?

Darius had to find him quickly. Any area of the asteroid belt was considered fair game if the boundary markers went offline for more than twenty-four contiguous hours, as counted by New Athens’ time. It didn’t matter that the claim was registered in the Space Grant offices in the world capital of Heklos, that Darius had re-filed the claim in his own name after his dad had died. He hadn’t even had to lie about his age, either, having recently turned eighteen.

Actual boundary markers around the borders of a claim were what the officials cared about.

Were the markers merely offline? Or had they been stolen? Maybe blown up?

Darius would have noticed them being destroyed. Orion would have notified him if there’d been a series of explosions nearby.

Wouldn’t it? Or was the entire alarm system still messed up?

After his dad’s death, Darius had traced every line and circuit he could (without removing all the walls and panels) going from the detectors in the front of the ship to the actual alarms set in the walls of his tiny cabin at the back of Orion.

It hadn’t taken long to find the short that had made Darius miss the first emergency call that his dad had sent.

Stupid ship was just too old, needed too many repairs that Darius couldn’t afford.

Had there been more than one short, though? Had Darius missed other alarms?

He quickly called up the alarm logs, the taste of metal flooding his mouth. He took a deep breath of the too stale air (another repair he couldn’t afford) and tried to calm himself.

Luckily, the logs didn’t show that Orion had issued any alarms. Chances were that the boundary markers hadn’t been blown up.

That meant there was a good chance they were in their formerly mapped location. They’d just been hijacked.

Darius