New arrivals are often surprised by how easy the belt is to work. Nobody needs heavy cutting plant to make a living out there, only collection gear and patience. That is not luck. It is the Vera Mining Association, which runs the colony’s breaker stations much as other places run their water and power: as public works, paid for from the public purse, to keep the colony producing.
Each serviced field has an anchor body, a single massive asteroid, and a breaker station working it. The station’s collar is a still outer ring with a cutting wheel turning inside it, and it draws the anchor into its throat and grinds it away at the face. What comes out is the rubble that fills the field: wedge-shaped pieces, broken wedges, and drilled core. The stations themselves are small cities. People live aboard, work long tours, and rotate home. Halden Reef, Tolvan Shallows and Veyra Trench are all serviced, and their rubble is replenished for as long as the anchor lasts.
Kessari Drift is what happens when it doesn’t. That anchor was worked out years ago, and its station stands dark over what was left behind. Accounts of why the station was left as it is differ, depending on who you ask. The field is free, finite, and popular with newcomers, who tend to find more there than the old crews thought worth taking.