The Decision

The Decision

The house had been quiet for three months.

Not the good quiet.

Not the kind you pray for when you finally get it.

The kind where the clock sounds louder than it should and every room feels like it’s waiting for someone who isn’t coming back.

Pa sat at the kitchen table with the paper folded in front of him, not reading it.

Ma poured coffee into two mugs even though he hadn’t asked.

She slid one to him.

“Kids called again,” she said.

Pa nodded. “I know.”

They’d both been getting the calls.

Too many questions.

Too much concern.

Ma sat down across from him.

“Do you remember when we used to plan things?”

Pa smiled a little. “I remember when we used to do them.”

They let that sit.

Ma reached over and tapped the paper on the table. An advertisement printed on the bottom of the page— a Holts Miner drifting through the Belt, clean and hopeful and full of promises.

Pa snorted. “That thing’s a lie.”

Ma said, “Every ad is.”

He looked at the ship against the star field.

“Kids’d lose their minds,” he said.

Ma shrugged. “They already have.”

He studied her then. Really studied her. The woman he’d built a life with. The woman who had raised three kids, run a household, held jobs, carried them both when times were thin.

“You bored?” he asked.

Ma shook her head.

“No,” she said. “I’m scared.”

Pa felt something in his chest loosen.

“Of what?”

“Of letting the rest of it just… happen to us.”

The clock ticked.

Pa leaned back in his chair. “We sell the house, we sell the truck, that’s our retirement.”

Ma nodded. “Or it’s our next life.”

He laughed softly. “You always were dangerous.”

Ma smiled. “You married me anyway.”

He looked at the ad again. At the miner. At the dark behind it.

“You really want this?” he asked.

Ma met his eyes.

“I want us to want something again.”

Pa folded the paper. Set it aside.

“Alright,” he said.

Ma blinked. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

She let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding.

Pa stood, walked to the window, looked out at the empty driveway.

“We’ll call the realtor tomorrow,” he said. “And the kids tonight.”

Ma stood and wrapped her arms around him from behind.

“They’re going to think we’re crazy.”

Pa rested his hands over hers.

“Good,” he said. “Means we’re still alive.”

Ma smiled into his back.

And somewhere out in the dark, the spaceship that would become the Stubborn was already waiting.

The Load

The first alarm wasn’t loud.

It was the kind of sound a ship makes when it doesn’t want to wake you.

Ma leaned forward in the pilot’s chair, fingers resting on the edge of the console.

“Pa,” she said quietly. “That return’s wrong.”

Pa was already standing. He drifted over, boots catching the deck, eyes on the mass readout.

The numbers were still climbing.

“That ain’t just ice,” he said.

The object rotated slowly outside the canopy — a misshapen thing, black-streaked, half-frozen vapor bleeding off its skin. Ice, ore, something denser knotted through it like bone. Not pretty. Not elegant. But heavy.

Ma ran the spec table.

Her mouth went thin.

“That’s over spec,” she said.

“How far over?”

“Enough that the Stubborn would tell us to mark it and walk.”

Pa watched the rock roll through the stars.

Then he looked at Ma.

“We can bring it in.”

She didn’t answer at first. She recalculated the thrust curves, the torque tolerances, the thermal margins.

Finally she nodded once.

“Yeah,” she said. “We can.”

The Grab

The grapples bit.

The Miner shuddered.

Pa eased the throttle.

The ship answered with a sound like a throat clearing — deep, uncertain, but willing.

Gyros complained.

The inertial dampers crept into yellow.

Ma flew the load in by touch, not instruments.

Little nudges.

Tiny corrections.

Every move felt like balancing a mountain on a spoon.

Then the arm overstress alarm climbed into red.

Pa was already unstrapping.

“I’ll brace the starboard claw.”

Ma kept the ship steady while he pulled on his suit. The load swung once — slow, enormous — and the whole miner rolled a degree off axis.

Ma whispered, “Easy… easy…”

Pa cycled the lock and stepped into open dark.

The Belt turned below him.

The brace had cracked. Not broken — just waiting.

He anchored himself with one hand and drove the new support home with the other, knuckles burning through the gloves.

“Try it now,” he said.

Ma feathered thrust.

The miner held.

For a moment neither of them spoke.

Then Pa said, “Okay. Let’s take this thing home.”

The Long Crawl

They couldn’t take a big thrust from the hybrid motor, Couldn’t even make normal burn.

So they crawled.

Three days of over stress alarms and half-sleep.

Three days of adjusting coolant flow and bleeding power from everything that didn’t matter.

Three days of watching the coolant temperature like a sparrow watched a hawk.

Once the port gyro stuttered and Ma caught the spin manually, hands steady as stone.

Once Pa rerouted the life-support reserve into the main bus and said, “We’ll breathe later.”

They ate protein paste and drank cooling water.

They never complained.

They never blamed.

They never stopped working.

Arrival

When they limped into the processing corridor, traffic control went quiet.

Then the channel popped.

“Miner ID Stubborn,” the controller said slowly. “Your mass reading is… not possible.”

Pa keyed the mic.

“It is if you’re married.”

The dock crew stared when they came in.

The scanner tech just shook his head.

It wasn’t a fortune.

But it was good.

Solid.

Clean.

More than enough.

The Payoff

The broker’s office smelled like old plastic and new money.

The man across the desk didn’t bother hiding his interest.

He kept glancing at the mass report on his slate like it might crawl away.

“You understand,” he said, “that material of this grade doesn’t just… appear.”

Pa nodded. “We understand it better than you do.”

The broker named a number.

Ma didn’t react.

He named a second number.

Pa raised one eyebrow.

The third number made the room go quiet.

Pa leaned back in the chair, folded his hands on his stomach.

“That’s closer,” he said.

Ma finally spoke.

“You’re buying the rock,” she said, “the location data, and the silence.”

The broker swallowed. “That’s not standard.”

Pa smiled. “Neither are we.”

The man hesitated.

Then nodded.

When the transfer cleared, Ma stared at the account display.

It wasn’t a fortune.

But it was freedom.

She let out a slow breath.

Pa watched her and grinned. “House and truck.”

Ma shook her head.

“No.”

He looked at her.

She said, “This will set up school accounts for the grand kids.”

Pa considered that.

“Then what else is the money for?”

Ma turned the slate around and slid it to him.

On the screen:

HOLTS MINER — DEEP BELT CONFIG

Pa’s smile grew.

The Choice

That night, back aboard the Stubborn, they lay in their bunks, the ship humming around them like a living thing.

Pa said, “We could stop.”

Ma said, “We could.”

They didn’t say anything else for a while.

Finally Pa turned his head toward her.

“You want to?”

Ma looked at the ceiling. At the faint scratches they’d put there themselves.

“Yes,” she said.

Pa reached over and took her hand.

“Me too.”

After

Later, the Miner was patched and cooling, and they sat in the cockpit with fresh coffee.

Pa looked at Ma.

“You think that was the big one?”

Ma watched the Belt drift by.

“No,” she said. “I think that was the one that proved it.”

He smiled.

She plotted the next course.

And the Stubborn turned back into the dark.