Moon Goo

Steky checked the bounty on the last battleship in the Angel Haven Grievance had sent her the coordinates for. It was less than a million Interstellar kredits. She cursed as the structural integrity of the Angel ship gave way under the onslaught of her carrier's fighters. It was a waste. She was not concerned with the lives of the crew aboard the Angel Cartel ships she was destroying. Each of the 2000 lives aboard that last battleship had chosen a life of crime. Her mind was more occupied with numbers and risk analysis. Her carrier was worth about 1.5 Billion Kredits, and it was a risk each time she took it out. And the time it took to earn a few tens of millions was mind numbingly boring.

 

She thought once again about her starbase equipment sitting in storage and checked the prices of moon alloys. Prices were going up because the new technologies alliances now used for strategic control of solar systems no longer required starbases to be anchored around the moons. It was a large capital investment to deploy starbases, and they required frequent refueling.  But they would mine the moons while she slept, and while she was awake she could spend her time defending alliance space rather than bounty hunting.  Steky dispatched a message to her CEO, Scrapple, and then orders to Grievance to begin exploration.

 

Grievance fit an expanded probe launcher to his Typhoon and set out.  It wasn't an ideal exploration ship.  He would have preferred something faster and more nimble.  But the survey probes took up a lot of cargo space, and he couldn't be bothered to try to find and fit a faster ship. First he checked the FMH solar system where Steky had occupied moons before just after ATLAS took the region.  He grumbled seeing they had new owners, but it was to be expected.  He set course to another system, a deadend that an old friend had once mined, and found several corp mates had starbase towers in that system as well.  After chatting a bit, they gave him some tips and he went to check out the moons in a couple nearby systems.  He grinned as the moon probe returned its data from the surface of the otherwise desolate looking celestial body.  The mineral Hafnium was reported in minable quantities.  A few systems over, Grievance found Vanadium, the other mineral needed for the reactor.  He relayed the information to Steky, and parked his ship in orbit around the Hafnium moon.

 

Steky woke and checked her neocom. No messages from the CEO, and he was not on comms.  The two moons Grievance had identified winked in the air over her charting table.  She needed to claim them quickly before someone else happened to notice them.  She put in a call to one of the directors and explained the situation.  He said he would give her roles long enough to put up a starbase control tower until the CEO got back to make a decision.  Steky ordered the carrier to jump back to the 77S Solar system and docked her carrier.  She quickly loaded a small Angel Control Tower, Moon Harvester, Silo, and an artillery battery into a Mammoth class hauler, along with the minimum fuel requirements and ammunition.

 

The crack of Steky's pistol rang off the walls of the bridge and the crew assembled jumped back as the body of the foreman slumped to the floor, the back of his head splattered on the wall behind him. "Now, who else has a problem manning the harvesting operation?"  The crewmen trembled and tried to pry their eyes off their boss on the floor to look at the capsuleer.  Nobody breathed a word.  Already the mess began to disappear as the automated cleaning bots performed their function.  In a few moments he would only be a memory.  steky cursed, "Is there any difference between hauling salvage from pirate wrecks?  Its not like you will be stuck out here indefinitely.  There will be hauler runs every few days for fuel and minerals and I will be glad to ferry your families for visits and shore leave as well." She holstered her pistol, the borderline mutiny had been snipped in the bud.  She promoted the most competent crewmember to foreman, and a few others to assist him.  They saluted and headed off to their new duties, along with tales of both horror and wonder at their boss who delivered both death and riches upon them like a god.

 

Barqs queried over the comms, "How's it going?"  Steky replied, "Good, onlining structures now."  She muttered as she offlined the harvester and silo again, and coded them for Hafnium, a step she had forgotten.  Her skills were rusty and she had to do the job of the former foreman. Soon they were back online and she linked the harvester to the silo.  As the arrays began powering up, she double checked everything.  There was fuel to power operations for four days.  That should be enough time to square things up with Scrapple, at which time she would fuel the control tower for a month.  She transmitted to Barqs the job was complete and collapsed in her quarters.  Tomorrow another tower for Vanadium... and the reactor.  She fell asleep dreaming of the angry foreman's face covered with moon goo.

Sensory Input

Shocku thought the command, picked up by his neural implant and racing at the speed of light through the optical network of his Rapier class ship's systems.  Everything went dark except heavily shielded life support systems in his capsule. It was nerve wracking to be suspended in ink black fluid with no sensory input.  If a meteoroid was about to pierce the hull of his ship, there would be no way for him to know until it was too late. But it was the only way, and even then it was a long shot. 

An enemy spacecraft plied this solar system, engaging and destroying the Angel Cartel pirates and collecting their resources in the asteroid belts.  Shocku could care less about the Cartel and its resources, but he wanted to deprive the enemy of the ability to profit from systems within Atlas territory. 

 

He counted the minutes, hoping he would be lucky and the enemy spacecraft would warp to the asteroid belt where his covert operations ship floated dark and quiet.  There was no way to tell without powering up his systems, and those would create a subspace signature the enemy ship would immediately detect as a spacecraft within the local system. 

 

Shocku counted and waited...  Suddenly he powered up the Rapier and immediately scanned the belt. The signature of a Drake was detected, but it immediately cloaked.  Shocku wondered if the Drake was piloted by man or machine.  He deployed drones, activated his micro warp drive, and set his trajectory towards the last known location of the drake.  Nothing, luck was not with him tonight.  Well, at least he had disrupted the enemy's operations this evening. 

 

Cloaking his ship a safe distance from the nearest belt, Shocku drained and disconnected his implants from his pod.  Feeling his lungs begin to heave, he doubled up and clenched his diaphragm, discharging the perfluorocarbons from his lungs in a long choking vomit.  Gasping, he grabbed a robe and headed to the captain's quarters for a shower.

 

As the warm steam shower washed his skin clean, Shocku smiled as the door to the vestibule slowly opened.  The slender girl entered tentatively at his approving nod and wrapped her arms around his midriff, pressing her warm body up to his.  Though he could not recall her name, he did remember her description from the electronic procurement forms he had signed before leaving the Ambrosia station in the AXDX solar system.  For once, the contents of a contract in New Eden were exactly as advertised.  He tangled his fingers amongst her blonde locks as her lips slid down from his navel.  Not a single implant jack marred the back of her scalp.  He would be her only source of sensory input this night in their far flung region of darkened space.