Chapter 1: Memphis Blues

Steven plunged his chainsaw into the ice, fragments of frozen dust floating up towards his visor as he carved out a deep furrow. Even with teeth tipped with artificial diamonds, the saw struggled at points – the ice at these temperatures was so cold that it behaved more like rock in many ways. He could feel the vibrations traveling up his arms, but with little atmosphere to speak of, all he could hear was his own labored breathing inside his helmet.

With a few more cuts, he freed a block of dirty ice about a meter square, sinking a long pick into its glistening surface and pulling it free of the quarry wall. It must have weighed about nine hundred kilos, but he could shift it with one arm in the low gravity, sending it slowly drifting to the ground. He took a moment to catch his breath, scratching his nose on the piece of velcro that was taped to the inside of his visor as he turned to take in the view.

He was standing high on the tiered platforms of the ice quarry, some three hundred meters from the bottom, the walls carved out of the moon’s surface like layers from a giant cake. A few dozen miners were scattered around the stepped walls of the strip mine, using their tools to cut out chunks, larger industrial machinery operating closer to the bottom of the pit far below.

Above his head, Jupiter loomed large, its colorful bands of swirling cloud dominating the black sky. It never ceased to make him feel tiny, the light that it reflected blotting out the stars. Ganymede was one of the few Jovian moons that had enough of a magnetosphere to shield its surface from the intense radiation that the gas giant spat out, and their pressure suits didn’t need quite as much shielding as a result. It was nice to get outside for a while – one of the perks of an otherwise less-than-desirable job.

His suit was covered in holsters and harnesses, most of his smaller tools stowed on his belt, the bulky air tank on his back keeping him supplied with oxygen. In fifteen percent Earth standard, it wasn’t a lot of extra weight to carry around. With a glance at the simple readout that was embedded on his wrist, he verified that his suit pressure and CO2 levels were still good. Pieces of sharp ice slicing through the outer lining weren’t uncommon, and his suit had collected its share of tape and hasty patches. With a press of a button on the side of his helmet, a straw extended towards his mouth, and he took a drink. Most of his water reserves were gone this late in the day, and he was mostly drinking recycled sweat.

He turned to the block of ice and tapped at his display with a gloved finger, entering its coordinates. A moment later, a drone appeared above his head, giving off little bursts of propellant from its thrusters as it descended. Steven took a few steps back, watching the skeletal frame of the autonomous vehicle settle over the block, securing it with mechanical claws that bit into its surface. The machine seemed to scrutinize him with its ball-shaped array of cameras for a moment, and then it was off, creating a little swirl of dust as it carted its payload into the sky.

Ganymede’s geysers spewed out jets of briny water from its subsurface ocean that settled across the moon’s surface, temperatures of minus two hundred degrees centigrade turning it into rock-hard ice. It wasn’t just a convenient source of H2O but also of organic compounds and salts. The magnesium sulfates were used in agriculture – essential for correcting nutrient deficiencies in the soil, without which the greenhouses couldn’t keep the moon fed.

As he revved his saw again, preparing to start on the next block, a distorted voice crackled over his helmet radio.

“Shift’s over, briners. Get your asses back to the borehole and clock out.”

Steven let out a sigh of relief that misted his visor, then turned off his saw and checked his tools. Once everything was accounted for, he began to bound up the meter-high tiers of the quarry, climbing them like steps made for a giant. At the top, he emerged onto relatively flat terrain, the endless fields of rock and ice stretching to the horizon in every direction. Without much of an atmosphere, he could see for hundreds of kilometers as clear as crystal. The surface was pocked with craters small and large, some with rims that rose so high as to be comparable to mountains in their own right, others barely more than a pothole. Much of the moon’s surface was grooved and striated, creating ridges and valleys – an artifact of Ganymede’s turbulent tectonic past.

There were a handful of structures near the quarry, mostly warehouses for storing heavy equipment. Far in the distance, he could see the glint of one of the moon’s glass domes, the structures forming clusters like giant soap bubbles. It was hard to get a gauge of their scale from so far away, but he knew from experience that they could enclose small cities. They had been the height of technology when they had first been built generations prior – the equal of their Martian counterparts, but as the population had grown, the limited space had become a pressing issue. They were overpopulated now, filled with sprawling shanty towns. Beneath their foundations, yet more people lived in old tunnels that had been bored out of the moon’s icy mantle.

The most prominent feature save for the gas giant was a nearby geyser, a glittering plume of briny water spewing high into orbit like an icy smoke stack, where it would eventually crystallize and rain back down to the moon as frost.

Off to his right was the tram platform – a raised structure connected to a single electromagnetic rail that trailed off into the distance. There was a small train sitting atop it, little more than a few connected cars with outward-facing seats where the workers could ride to and from the quarry. They didn’t need to be enclosed or pressurized in an environment like this one.

More workers were emerging, bounding their way over to the platform in the low gravity. Each suit was a little different, customized by its owner, bearing the scars of wear and tear. They began to pile into the seats, stowing their larger tools and equipment in bins between the rows.

Steven lurched as he felt someone pat him on the shoulder, turning to see a pair of smiling eyes peering back at him through a frost-caked visor. The man gestured to his helmet, prompting Steven to tap into the local radio channel.

“Steven,” the man said. It was Feng – one of his drinking buddies. “What are you doing standing out here? You’re gonna miss the tram back to the bore.”

“Just taking it all in,” Steven replied as he spared the gas giant another glance.

“It’ll be here tomorrow.”

“Yeah, but I might not be.”

“Steve,” Feng sighed, the two bounding their way across the ice towards the platform. “Is this about that UN thing again? You realize it’s a lottery, right? As in – most people who play are destined to lose?”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t have a chance.”

“No, but I wouldn’t plan my schedule around it,” Feng chuckled as he began to climb up into the rear car. He stowed his drill, then turned to sit on one of the padded chairs, gripping the tubular guard rail with a bulky glove. “Thousands of people apply for those things every month, and maybe ten get picked.”

“The odds of a suit breach aren’t much worse, but you’d never leave the airlock without a reel of tape,” Steven chided as he secured his saw in one of the bins. “They sent out the summons at fifth orbit, so there might be one waiting for me in my inbox.”

“There are worse places to be than Ganymede, you know,” Feng continued as the car lurched into motion. They began to speed away from the platform, the uneven terrain whipping past beneath them, the train of cars levitating just above the rail.

“Name one,” Steven grumbled.

“Hades?” Feng suggested with a shrug.

“At least Hades has a breathable atmosphere.”

“Titan?”

“You can walk around on the surface without a pressure suit there.”

“What position did you even apply for, anyway?” Feng asked as he turned his helmeted head to watch a crater zip past. “I can’t imagine that ice miners are highly sought after.”

“Office work.”

“Office work?” Feng scoffed. “Sorry, but I have a hard time picturing you sitting behind a desk.”

“That was actually my first job before I got this gig,” Steven explained as he shifted his weight, trying to get comfortable with his air tank digging into his back. “I used to push paper for the sewage plant at Marius Regio.”

“You worked at a sewage plant?”

“Take it easy, asshole,” Steven muttered as he reached over to nudge his snickering friend. “I wasn’t shoveling shit – I was doing data entry, bookkeeping.”

“Sounds like a cushier job than cutting ice. How did you end up out here?”

“You ever been to Marius?” Steven asked. “Calling it a hellhole would be an insult to hellholes. Once I’d saved up enough paychecks, I was out of there, and I didn’t care where I was going. I heard there were jobs down here, so I took the first maglev and signed up.”

“You’re lucky you could find an apartment the way things are these days. There are as many people squatting in illegal tunnels as there are living in the domes.”

It wasn’t long before another structure appeared in the distance, the train soon coasting to a stop at the far platform. Everyone climbed out of their seats, hauling their equipment and slinging packs over their shoulders. A short walk from the platform was the borehole – a squat building that served as little more than an airlock and an enclosure for the cargo elevator that would take the crew back down into Ganymede’s subsurface tunnels.

Some three dozen workers made their way through the double doors, forming a crowd inside the spacious airlock as it began to pressurize. The sound of hissing air and clattering gear gradually grew louder until a green light above the inner doors illuminated to signal that they could remove their helmets. Steven popped his seal and shook out his dark hair, taking in a deep breath of comparatively fresh air as he wiped away some of the sweat that had accumulated on his brow. Even now, he could taste the salt in the atmosphere, the ice dust that coated their suits and tools already beginning to melt into slurry.

“Listen up!” someone shouted, the chorus of conversations dying down. Steven quickly recognized the gravelly voice of their shift manager. “If you’re pulling overtime, be sure to refill your tanks and change your filters! Carbon monoxide poisoning is no joke – we had a guy take off his helmet on the surface a few weeks back. Poor bastard couldn’t even remember that he was outside the dome. The rest of you – I want tools in lockers and cards punched. Anything gets misplaced, it comes out of your paycheck.”

They began to file through onto the elevators, Steven feeling the platform lurch as it started to descend, striations of ice sweeping past beyond the windows as they sank deep into the moon’s mantle. At the bottom, they entered an equipment storage area where they stowed their tools and began to change out of their suits. It was little more than a metal box, more comparable to the inside of a spaceship than even the prefabs favored on many colonies, trailing pipes and cables that carried air and power forming a dense network on the ceiling above. The hum of air filters was inescapable, the little strips of fabric that were tied to their grills fluttering in the stale breeze, reassuring the occupants that the ancient systems hadn’t quietly failed. A few ceiling fans spun lazily, helping to circulate the air, the dim glow of dirty bulbs bathing the room in artificial light that seemed somehow insufficient. Everything was old – the faux leather on the seats scuffed and torn, the hinges on the lockers squeaky, the floor panels creaking with each step.

Even if government corruption was removed from the equation, there still wasn’t enough money to go around. The systems that had once been designed to handle set numbers of inhabitants had been stretched far beyond their intended capacities, kept functional through maintenance and retrofitting for generations. Some of the tech was hundreds of years old, and if it wasn’t broken, you didn’t fix it.

While Ganymede was the only moon in the Jovian system where one could walk on the surface without heavy radiation gear, the same techniques used to bore habitable tunnels on Callisto and Europa had still been employed. Initially, they had been used for infrastructure and transportation, but it hadn’t been long before they had been used to expand the moon’s living space. Great tunnels were bored from the ice using drills – commonly those intended to excavate train tunnels – and structures were erected in the resulting cavities.

They had to be airtight in order to be pressurized, and they were surrounded with insulating foam both to protect the habs from the freezing temperatures, and to protect the tunnels from their warmth. While the ice was as hard and as sturdy as bedrock, it would still begin to melt if exposed to heat. Just as Feng had mentioned, illegal tunneling was epidemic as overpopulation and lack of sufficient housing pushed people to try to dig their own passages. Networks of unauthorized settlements and smuggling routes spread out from each dome like roots from a tree, putting further strain on the power grid and life support systems, while a failure to meet even Ganymede’s lax safety standards made them dangerous at best.