The Colonists (The Movement Trilogy) by Jason Gurley

The handles of each utensil, smeary with grease. The coffee cups are patterned with black fingerprints. The sludge is not easy to remove, but Linset scrubs, holding the dishes firmly in her prosthetic hand. The motors inside her fingers tick and buzz. She can feel them, but the sounds aren't audible to anyone but her.  
    Even she can't hear them. She can only sense their vibrations.
    Her fingers are like mechanical vises.  
    In the mess hall outside she can hear the clogged throats and sinuses of the miners. They breathe like windows not firmly shut. Air wheezes in. Acrid air wheezes out. Their faces are thick with black dust. The dust clings to any new surface like glue. When they touch their faces, the dust leaps onto their fingers, leaving a dusky bare spot on their cheeks.
    The sound of the miners choking away makes Linset choke a little, too.
    She wonders: if she changes her name enough times, will she one day forget her given name.
    And so, as she scrubs and scrubs, she chants inside of her mind.
    Hatsuye.
    Hatsuye.
    Hatsuye.
    Hot sue yay.
    Hatsuye.  
    Haaaatsuye.  
    When she is relieved, she bows to her replacement, and walks barefoot to the kitchen. The food parcels are emptied onto plates and into bowls. Today the choices are carrot stew or beet salad. Hatsuye thinks of her traveling partner, asleep in their compartment, and takes two bowls of stew.  
    She carries a tray through the kitchen, scooping up two cups of water as she goes.  
    The kitchen is automated, but the machinery clogs daily with grime, and as Hatsuye exits, she hears the familiar chunk-chunk of the parcel line shutting down. The line attendant grumbles to his feet, wakened from a nap, and bangs on the machine with his palm. He spies Hatsuye as she slips away, and thinks of ordering her to help him.
    Something in her eyes suggests otherwise, and he closes his mouth.
    Hatsuye carries the tray through the mining station. It's a long way from the mess to the compartments, but she walks without complaining. The soles of her feet will be black by the time she reaches her quarters.  
    She crosses the starbridge without pausing to admire the view, though at this time of evening, the mining station has turned toward the moon below. The hundreds of drilling rigs pulse and glow blue against the pitch sky. From here, thousands of miles above the surface, the rigs are silent. But on the surface, their clatter is cacophonous and muted, as if booming from deep beneath a sea. The rigs are connected by rail to a constantly-active processing hub. The hub is recessed into the surface of Deimos, and is open to the dark sky. From orbit, the hub looks like the socket of a missing tooth.
    On the far side of the starbridge, a man in a linen robe holds up a large screenview. The words on the glass read:

    WE ARE TERMITES

    The man's face pleads with each passerby.  
    Hatsuye doesn't meet his eyes, but he speaks to her anyway.
    Deimos is being consumed by human greed, he cries. By the time my children are grown, it will be gone. We will have forever altered our system.  
    He turns away from her, and pleads with the next man.
    Please, he says. Please stop destroying Deimos.
    Hatsuye steps into a descent well, and lightly floats down, out of sight of the protestor.
    She sinks, directed downward by gentle waves that pulse through the gravity-free well, until she reaches the residence sub-level. Her assigned quarters are close to the wells, and Hatsuye presses her fingertips onto the pattern lock pad in sequence.
    The door opens, and she enters.  
    •   •   •
    The doom guy is still there, Hatsuye says.  
    You say that every day, comes a reply from the bed.
    The worst part is, he's completely right, Hatsuye says. It kills me. I want to talk to him and say, I get you, I'm with you, man. But I can't. He's right, though. The moon is practically dissolving in front of us. Every day they remove hundreds of tons from the core. I don't think he's right about the timing,