Cody, Chapter 3 With a final, weary sigh, Cody killed the power to the excavator. The hum of machinery wound down into silence, leaving a ringing emptiness in his ears that mirrored the monotony of his day. His fingers brushed against the cold, metallic surface of the control panel as he scanned the list stuck there with a piece of peeling tape – a tangible reminder of his father's expectations: iron, copper, nickel, titanium, lithium, beryllium, and the ever-elusive gold and silver. He tapped at the computer's screen, bringing up the latest sorting data. Dusty pixels coalesced into graphs and figures, confirming what he already knew. Nickle-iron. His lips pressed into a thin line; it was as common here as the boredom that clung to him like the dust on his coveralls. Cody leaned back in the chair, stretching arms laden with fatigue above his head, eyeing the map displayed on another screen. Five miles from the main ship – a distance that underlined his isolation. Not worth the trek back. He'd just be turning around and coming out again with the sunrise. "Home sweet home," he muttered, acknowledging the excavator's dual purpose with a glance around the cockpit that had become far too familiar. Ascending from his pilot seat throne, he plodded down the narrow, metal stairs to the living quarters nestled within the excavator's belly. Here, the air held the sterile scent of recycled oxygen and plastic. His bunk beckoned, but his stomach growled louder, reminding him of his mother’s instructions: "Eat real food, Cody." Real food. The concept almost made him chuckle. The kitchen module housed rows of long-range food packs, their shelf life an ironic contrast to the fleeting flavors they promised. Dad was always joking he’d found one that was dated before the space age. Cody settled on spaghetti – or at least the pack's optimistic label claimed it was. The microwave dinged a tuneless note, and he ate methodically, the sauce more vivid in color than taste. Meal dutifully completed, he grabbed a protein bar and slumped into the chair by his personal computer – When a chewable bar of molecularly altered edible dirt was more palatable then the ‘real’ food, it was time to go shopping, but the grocery cargo ship that sold fresh food to people living out on the fringe of known space wasn’t due until next year. The glow of the screen casting a blue pallor across his face. It was time for the daily ritual, the flicker of hope that fought against the mundanity of mining. He tapped the keyboard, initiating the sequence that would check for new messages. "Come on, Tara," he whispered to the machine, to the void, to anyone who might be listening, "give me something good today." Cody's heart skipped a beat as a familiar voice pierced the hum of machinery. "Your finger is on the send button, Cody." "Damien?" Cody's voice held an edge of disbelief as the name fell from his lips. Damien was the clothing and equipment merchant from the Ganymede Space Station. Cody hadn't expected the merchant's guttural tones to fill the cabin today—or any day soon, for that matter, Damien only delivered by remote supply drone to remote mining sectors, preferring the bustling trade routes closer to settled systems. “How you doing buddy?” Damien’s voice crackled through the comm link with an ease that belied the undercurrent of tension. "I didn't know you were out our way," Cody said, trying to keep his tone even. The words came out more as an accusation than surprise. It was unusual for the merchant to venture this far from the trade lanes, especially without a good reason—a reason that seldom boded well for those on the receiving end. Cody's breath hitched, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead as the words filtered through the static of the comm link. Damien's voice, once a harbinger of new clothes and gear now carried a chilling promise. "I'm headed towards you," said Damien. “Is your dad there?” “Umm… yeah, they’re outside…” Cody began. “Don’t lie to me, Cody, I can hear it in your voice. He’s out on an expedition, isn’t he?” said Damien. “Will you tell me where he is?” “No,” replied Cody defiently. "Then I'm really sorry this is going to have to fall on you, my friend, but your father is maxed out on his credit limit, and he hasn’t made a payment in some time. I’ll either be leaving with my money, or your fingers hanging from a string around my neck." A visceral fear clawed at Cody's gut, sending him into a primal, protective reaction. His hands, calloused and worn from the relentless work, shot beneath him, pressing against the metal seat with a thud that resonated in the small cabin. "You wouldn't really do that, would you?" The plea escaped Cody's lips before he could catch it, his voice barely above a whisper, betraying the vulnerability he fought so hard to keep buried. The notion that someone he’d shared laughs and stories with could inflict such brutality seemed surreal, yet the cold vacuum of space had a way of warping relationships, turning friend to foe over something as trivial as currency. Cody's breath hitched, the edges of his vision blurring with a cocktail of fear and defiance. He could almost feel the icy grip of space closing around him, as if the void itself were complicit in Damien's threat. "I don't know, would I?" Damien's words slithered through the comm-link, a serpent's hiss that made Cody's spine stiffen. The voice that once signified a friendly barter now carried the weight of an ultimatum. "Come on, we're friends," Cody countered, his tone laced with a hint of desperation. He wrung his hands out of sight, feeling the rough texture of his palms—a reminder of the countless hours spent mining. Friends. The word felt hollow bouncing off the metal walls, mocking him with echoes of a bond frayed by harsh necessity. In the silence that followed, Cody's pulse thrummed in his ears, each heartbeat a drum roll to an outcome he couldn't fathom, yet one he must face with the resilience that had kept him alive this long. "Your family owes me a lot of money," Damien finally broke the stillness, his voice flat, devoid of the joviality that used to accompany their exchanges. Cody swallowed hard, the dryness in his throat making it difficult to speak. His gaze darted to the star-speckled blackness outside his porthole, where chunks of rock and metal floated like silent guardians of his solitude. "I’ve been mining, I have twenty tons of nickel-iron." "I've got plenty of iron, I need copper." The sound of Damien leaning back in his chair, the leather creaking under the shift of weight, echoed over the comm-link. "I'll tell you what, you get me a hundred tons of copper, and we'll call your bill paid and I’ll only break three fingers for making me come out here to collect." A hundred tons! The words ricocheted inside Cody’s skull, each syllable a hammer strike to his dwindling hope. It wasn’t just the number that stung—it was the gravity behind it, the implication of an impossibility designed to be unattainable. “A hundred tons!” he echoed, his voice strained the absurd reality of that much copper. "That's impossible." "Nothing's impossible if you're desperate enough," Damien retorted, a smirk playing around the corners of his mouth. "I’ve seen what you can do out there, Cody. You’re resourceful when you’re cornered. How many times have you pulled your parents out of the fire? Face it, Cody, you know your parents have been avoiding me. The only way to get their attention is through you.” Cody's gaze shifted to his own hands, calloused from work, from holding onto dreams too heavy for their grip. His mind raced, calculating, considering all options. There were asteroids rich with copper, but they were elusive, buried within treacherous swathes of space, where the risk often outweighed the reward. He thought of his family, with the debt that hung over them like a storm cloud ready to burst. They depended on him, on his ability to navigate through fields of rock and metal, to extract what value he could from the unforgiving void. "Three weeks," Damien's voice cut through his reverie, sharp and final. "Three weeks," Cody muttered under his breath, a silent vow. He’d have to push himself, his equipment, and his luck to the limits. But for his family, for their freedom from this crushing debt, he would delve into the heart of the asteroid belt and wrestle from it the copper that spelled their salvation—or his doom. Cody's fingers tightened into fists, the knuckles whitening with the strain. His breath came in short, sharp bursts, fogging the glass of his helmet as his mind grappled with Damien’s demand. The weightless environment of his cabin seemed to press in on him, intensifying the gravity of the situation. "Damien," he said, voice tight, "I can’t get you that much copper, I can probably get twenty tons." He could hear the blood thudding in his ears, a stark reminder of his vulnerability out here at the very edge of known space. The silence stretched between them before Damien's voice crackled through the static. "We are friends," he said, and there was an edge of something—regret, maybe?—in his tone. "I’ll tell you what, Cody, you get me twenty tons of copper and I’ll let you choose which three fingers I break, deal?" "Stop it." Cody's voice was a low growl now, but beneath the anger stirred a cold ribbon of fear. "You're just trying to scare me, it's not funny." The laughter that came back at him was hollow, devoid of real humor. It was the sound of a man who had long ago buried his conscience under the weight of darker deeds. "Oh, Cody," Damien sighed. "You know I can't go back empty-handed." Cody felt the stirrings of defiance. He wouldn’t let fear cripple him—not when so much was at stake. He stared up at his Quasar award from the Young Engineers Society hanging on the wall. Every Senior Engineer on every Fleet Ship had won that award when they were around Cody’s age, and no Fleet Ship with a former Quasar recipient aboard had ever lost a battle. It’s why Fleet Ships offered such huge recruiting bonuses to the Quasar winners. Maybe he could use that to tip the balance back to his side. "I'll be there in three weeks," Damien's voice carried an unsettling calm through the speakers, the sort of calm that precedes a storm. Cody's glare fixated on the microphone, the intermediary between his fraught existence and the man who thought he could intimidate him into submission. Taut muscles in his jaw flexed as he responded, "You know I'm a Quasar," he said, his voice steady, betraying none of the tension that knotted his insides. "How big of a canon do you think I can build in three weeks?" Cody challenged, his words spiked with the steel of resolve. He envisioned it then—the weapon that could emerge from the scraps and spare parts littering his hold. Potent enough to punch a hole through a ship's hull—or at least convincing enough to give someone like Damien pause. The threat was a gambit, a play at buying time, but it surged through Cody's veins with the ferocity of a plasma burst. The chuckle that echoed through the comm-link was rich and resonant, almost infectiously warm if not for the undercurrent of something darker. It did little to thaw the iciness in Cody's veins. "Ah, this is why I like you, Cody, you’ve got steel in your spine," Damien said, his voice a velvet rumble across the void. "Okay, get me twenty tons of copper, and I’ll only break two fingers." "Fine, I'll find some copper, but you’re not breaking my fingers," Cody conceded, begrudgingly. His hand dropped to the armrest of his chair, gripping it until his knuckles whitened. He glanced down at his coveralls, noting the frayed edges and the way they clung tighter than they used to against his broadening shoulders. "And bring me a new spacesuit, I'm outgrowing the one I have," he added, a gruff edge to his voice that spoke less of growth and more of the weariness from too many days in a suit that no longer fit. The comm crackled, Damien's voice slicing through the silence with an edge sharper than any blade. "I'll see you in three weeks, and remember, snip snip." The threat was clear, the consequence of failure laid bare in two simple words, their sinister hiss echoing in the space between them. Defiance flared within him like a supernova. With a force born of both desperation and determination, he jammed his finger down on the send button. The action was decisive, the click of the key a battle cry in the quiet of his ship. "Fine, three weeks, boom boom," he growled into the microphone, his voice gravelly with the weight of promises and threats. It was a dance as old as time, two adversaries locked in a push and pull of power and survival. As the transmission light blinked off, Cody leaned back in his seat, the tension seeping from his shoulders. His jaw unclenched slowly, each thought now focused on the task ahead – securing copper wouldn’t be easy. But it wasn't just copper he needed; it was leverage, a means to tip the scales back in his favor and keep the wolves at bay. Three weeks. The deadline hung in the air like the remnants of a distress signal, fading but persistent. Cody glanced at the toy dragon propped up on the console. “We’re in trouble, Dragon.” The dragon’s eyes stared back as if to say, ‘you should call your parents and tell them what’s happened.’ Cody shook his head. “We can’t. I don’t think Damien would really hurt me, but he would hurt mom and dad. We have to solve this on our own.”