Sliding out of her bed the girl looks at the clock, currently reading 7:35 she sighs and goes through her morning stretches. Looking around the dull rusty red room she smiles. She pulls on her work clothes, what appears to be a military uniform, but so old and dirty that it is hardly recognizable. Then she approaches the clock and a calendar underneath it, and with a red ballpoint pen she marks another day off, her smile grows as she realizes that only 2 months remain until the day marked ‘Home.’
A few moments later she opens the door to a long hallway, she steps in, and after closing the door she starts to jog down it. She tries to keep her speed steady, matching the speed of the wall to her right, as she moves along gently sloping hall she places her hand on the cool metal. As she runs she listens to the sound of her footsteps in almost total silence other than the slow, soft, grinding of the wall shifting along a hidden track of ball bearings. She sees her cabin pass once, and then a little later a second time, and at this she slows, taking the next door she gets to.
A mess hall, empty and clean. She walks across to the food dispenser and types something into the keypad, a few moments pass before a frozen muffin drops onto a plate. The frost slowly falls off as invisible lasers heat the muffin back to room temperature. Taking it she sits at the large empty table in the center of the room, a table large enough for several dozen men, but populated by only her.
The young women, who could not even be past her twentieth year, slowly eats her muffin. Brushing her long black hair out of her face she finishes. Then she picks up a large pair of boots, a little large for her slim figure. She buckles the boots closed, they seem like work boots, both with red lights and green lights on the back, currently displaying red. Standing she stretches one more time, and leaving the plate on the table she walks to the exit.
Back outside she stands in the hallway, waiting idly as the far wall slides along, she wears no makeup, and is unlikely to win any beauty contests because while her face is slim and pretty, her breasts are hardly visible under the uniform, and her curves are not strong enough to force the eye to look at her.
Here it is, what she’s been waiting for, along the wall a door slides, slowly coming towards her. With practiced ease she takes a step through the door. On the other side she stands on a metal plate, the lights on her boots now green, and watches as the mess hall slides away.
She grins again, as the fun part of her day arrives; she disengages both magnetic boots (the lights turning red) and pushes off the ground with both legs, soaring to a nearby closed hatch. Grabbing onto a bar she slows her movements, and opens the hatch. The tube beyond is only twice the width of her shoulders, and for most people it would have been tight, but she doesn’t hesitate and she launches herself down the tube, pausing every few seconds to kick the side of a tube and propel herself faster.
Over the course of a minute she manages to get up to quite a speed, probably 30, maybe 40 kph, fast enough that she rockets out the tube into a larger area, careening into a huge pile of blankets and foam, that looks like it’s been tied into place by an armature. The culprit flusters around in the pile for a few moments until she manages to get untangled, and jumps onto a platform that leads deeper into the metal behemoth.
The boots’ red lights turn green as she lands and she shakes for a few moments as she gains her balance. Then she slowly starts to walk, the lights changing from green to red and back again as the moves along. As she walks she stares off out into the nearby windows watching her room, the mess and the huge solar panels that power them sailing though the void overhead; the inertia providing her with a good, pseudo-gravity bound place to sleep.
She watches as an asteroid passes far overhead, not a big enough one for her to be concerned, but she does note it. Soon she reaches another tube, this one much larger, big enough for several people to walk along, again the lights change to red, as she pushes off, speeding down the long tube to her workplace. She doesn’t go as fast this time, but a little later she shoots out of a tube, grabbing a handle and changing her direction to soar onto the bridge.
She positions herself and sits in the command chair, looking around at the dozen other empty chairs scattered across the bridge. With a few button presses she opens the huge metal shutters covering the windows. Out of the much larger windows she can see a bit more than just the rotating part of the ship. Far in front of her she indeed sees the huge solar panels rotating silently in the void, but from the window she can also see the reprocessing center closer to her, and the huge hanger beyond the vanes, traveling off as far as the eye can see.
The radio chirps as she watches her ship traveling through the void “This is Misers Delight, just saying good morning to all you honest folk out there.” Says some man who sounds mildly Jewish, but about as young as her. She smiles happy that she isn’t entirely alone, and sends a short reply, though the man won’t hear it for an hour or so. She gently touches the controls of the old ship, bringing up the latest scans of the area that she had begun before heading to sleep, and finding a suitable ‘roid she turns to the navigational controls.
Her fingers dance and she hears the hum as the ship comes to life. Out in the distance, on the farthest point of the hanger a blue flame jets into the void, and her ship slowly, sluggishly starts to move, changing course ponderously, only 10 degrees in a minute. After three minutes she changes jets, once again feeling the behemoth shift under her. Then tapping the controls she activates a 3 second burn. Across the ship, pale blue lights seem to come alive, the entire ship appears illuminated for these seconds as the massive engines, just out of sight on the bridge, come to life, putting out millions of tons of thrust. As she watches the light glinting off the hull of her ship she feels her body pressed into the chair by the force, she smiles wryly as she imagines her muffin plate sliding off the table and landing on the ground.
It’s only a few seconds however and then the ship moves through the void at a decent speed, the women programs a few minor adjustments to be made during the trip, and the braking maneuver for the end of the trip. Then she stands, and pressing a few buttons sends the shutters folding slowly over the windows.
This time she doesn’t plan on making a long trip however and silently walks to the interior shuttle, something similar to an elevator and get’s into it, programming it to take her on an inspection tour ending in the hanger control room. She hears the rails electrify and a few moments later the shuttle is fired along them, accelerating fast as it takes her out into the ship.
First the Refinery, she watches as the shuttle fires out into the cavernous room, and below she sees ore traveling along conveyer belts and being processed by the throng of robots below her, the ore turned into bars and then ingots, and eventually sent...
Into the cargo bays, just below the refinery where stacks and stacks of packed boxes are filled with every imaginable type of ore, she notes that it’s almost enough to package into a shipment to send home. Then the shuttle heads through an airlock door...
To the Engine room, where the five engines and the huge power stations are housed, as the shuttle flies by the building-sized machines she can’t help but think about how small and insignificant she is. That only lasts until she moves through the next airlock...
Into space, or to be precise the underside of the ship, she passes through the communications array, visually checking for damage as the shuttle follows the rails down the ship. She looks up as they reach the midpoint and admires the solar panels once again, from the living deck they jut, slowly circling the ship, each of the twelve panels taller than almost any skyscraper. They always take her breath away, especially as a nearby thruster ignites and the countless reflections of blues and greens shimmer off its surfaces.
Too soon the shuttle re-enters the ship, but she can always look forwards to tomorrow’s pass. Now they are in the hanger and she visually checks the ships dotting it as the shuttle flies above them, mounted on a ceiling track. Over a thousand different drones lay before her, huge mining drones, small repair drones, and each one an automated ship under her direct command. She smiles again at this thought; it’s only soured by the fact that not a single one is younger than her, the youngest one made almost five years before her birth, before the last war.
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Only a few minutes have passed, but she slides into the hanger control room, the room she is spent the most time in during the last two years. Even more important than the bridge the HCR (Hanger Control Room) is only half as big but for only a single task, controlling the thousands of drones that a Niflheim class Carrier is capable of operating simultaneously.
She sighs sadly looking at the thousands of empty chairs, made obsolete by the advances in computer technology. Getting out of the shuttle she pushes off and arrives in the master control chair, the only real point to this room anymore.
She sits and stares at the blue holographic screen displaying her automated fleet, the same old icons and status symbols that she sees every day. Her fingers dance across the keyboard with slender swift flowing movements. As they touch symbols and icons she hears rumbling below her, and sees thousands of lights light up the hanger below her, the glasslike floor showing her the ship’s moving and stirring in time to the dance of her fingers, magnetic clamps deactivating as her fingers touch the screen.
It takes a moment but the soon the ships in the hanger start to dance in time to her fingers, thrusters and robotic arms moving in step with her fingers as she performs a well choreographed piece, ships move in between one another shifting past each other by less than a meter as they prepare themselves. The busy hive starts out chaotic, but as she assigns ships into work details they dance into place, billions of computers calculating trajectories and burst times to move into formations. Her fingers are formations, the grand dance of light and sound moving in perfect harmony with her own.
And as fast as the dance starts it pauses, all the ships floating in place, having found their formations they wait, floating in the depths of the hanger. The steady light and quiet silence of the void almost ominous, the hive waits for the ultimate moment of tension.
Waiting
Waiting
Waiting her fingers hover over the icons, still, just a slight tremble...
There, the moment the swarm has been waiting for. The first sign is when the thousands of ships move slightly forwards, about a meter their engines cold as the void wrapped around them, they react a heartbeat later, and as one they activate their reverse thrusters. The girl’s fingers touch a moment later, dancing across the screens of the computer.
The dance resumes, the first formations moving forward towards the hanger door, the door opens silently, the only physical hint the image of it opening and the feel of her chair vibrating. Out into the void fires the formation of scout ships, arcing out of her sight in every direction, followed by luminous blue lines from their ion drives.
Behind her in the empty room thousand of lights turn on as the multitude of computers display images from the cameras on every ship, as the scout ships send back their telemetry.
On her screens she sees representations of the space around the behemoth, the asteroid and massive fragments of ice displayed as blue lined computer generated models, her scouts searching for ore.
With another dance another formation of ships fires out into the void, and she watches their feeds as they fly after the scouts, flying to the numerous asteroids in the area, flying over the canyons of ice, and the jagged rock asteroids. Then flashes she notes as the excavation drones begin their work, pulses of bright green lasers flashing as they burn the stone and melt the ice. Then she sees them from behind as her view changes to the miners behind, and she watches as the drones fire striking green, looking like fireflies trying to bring light to the dark void.
Again her view jumps as she fires another formation of ships into the void, this time the cargo ships to gather up the ore and bring it back to her home. She watches the flurry of activity as they head to the dig sites so far apart, their artificial brains already setting up work schedules with the guidance of her dancing fingers. The hundreds of active ships still in the hanger shift and move, preparing themselves to remove the ore and repair the damage that the other drone will doubtlessly obtain.
After hours of work she sits back to watch the drones do their thing. Taking full control of a scout she floats around the void watching the hives of robots slowly stripping the asteroids into their base components and returning them to the ship. With her small job done for now she stands, stretches, and yawns then leaving the computer station begins to walk back to the shuttle.
She programs it to take her back to the habitat, and with a quick boost it accelerates down the rail. Out into space the shuttle is fired and she watches as drone ships whiz by carrying out their orders, she admires the blue ice shards hanging in the void around her, some as big as the moon, others the size of her room. She feels sad when the shuttle vanishes back into the ship, diving deep past the rusty red hull. When it halts she again steps out and shoves herself down the tube back to her living quarters.
She stops and stands on the metal once again, watching the gravity laden hallway moving on the other side of the door, waiting until the door to the mess hall returns. She sees the sign and turning her boots off once again she takes a step. With practiced ease she moves into the world of gravity. She walks back into the mess hall, where her morning began, and picks up the plate lying on the floor, cleaning up the few crumbs scattered across the floor. She moves again to the food dispenser and soon a thawing meal sits on her tray. She sits and eats, wishing that she had a window to watch her drones.
With the food done she puts the trays and plates away, watching them speed away to whatever robotic arm will clean them for tomorrow and she walks down the hall to the bathroom. She turns on the shower, watching the water cascading down and wondering how many times she has used this water. Slowly she strips off the uniform, placing each in the laundry chute, where they fall... likely to another robot. She steps into the shower and sighs as she feels the warm water follow the curve of her body to the drain below, washing what little grit she accumulated on her clean ship. Washing her cares away she enjoys her shower, possibly the only part of her life that is similar to her childhood.
She stops the water, turning the nozzle off, and standing alone in the shower, naked, listening. No distant voices, no cars passing, no signs of any people at all in fact. The only sound is the gentle rumble of the wheel turning, and the gurgle of the water as it drains away to whatever distant tank it goes to.
And her own breathing, gently going in and out, and quieter than that, only barely audible in the almost complete silence of the void is her heartbeat.
She steps out of the shower, picking up her hairbrush she gently brushes her long hair, back into place. Standing still, looking at herself in the mirror, she listens to her heartbeat some more.
Naked she walks back through the hallway, letting her body dry as she walks. Her eyes closed she follows the steps she has taken hundreds of times, walking silently back to her room. Stepping into her room she sits on her bed, and opens her eyes. She taps her computer a few times, ordering a new work uniform for tomorrow, making sure to specify that it is to be old and relatively dirty.
Lying back in her bed she pulls the covers over her naked body, and closes her eyes, letting her heartbeat guide her to sleep.
The next 3 days she wakes up, and crosses a new day off her calendar, but they are otherwise exactly the same, the behemoth floats lazily in the void as the hive of her robotic drone’s works diligently to the dance of her fingers.
But approximately half way through the third day something different happens. Once again her fingers dance across the screens as she sits, watching the hive strip mines out several more asteroids. Today she takes control of ‘Scout Drone 7a’ flying though the silent void above the center of one of the largest ice asteroids, watching the drones rip apart the top and bottom of the asteroid.
As ‘Ex drone 879’ blows a chunk of ice into oblivion she would have sworn she could hear it, as a huge crack resounds across the asteroid, a solid wall of ice suddenly twanging and bending open, the seismographic sensors of every drone in contact with the asteroid going off the scale.
The resulting crack is easily large enough for the behemoth to enter fully, going down deep into the depths of the asteroid, until she can’t see the bottom, not even on sensors.
Curious she sends scouts, and each time brings them back as they slowly lose signal, cautiously she calls all her drones back, spending hours running every sort of test she can on the ice, checking to see if it is in danger of shifting again. While her sensors do not penetrate deep enough into the asteroid to see what’s inside they can detect the edges of very heavy ore deposits. They also show her that the tensions in the ice all left when it cracked open, so for all intents and purposes it would be safe to enter.
She cuts power to all noncritical systems from the bridge, and then slowly starts up the ships engines, slowly creeping towards the crack. It takes her almost 2 hours to navigate down the deep crack, actually navigating around obstacles for once instead of just in a straight line.
As her clock says it getting late she even takes a nap, programming the computer to wake her if anything moves at all, but sure enough when she wakes everything is the same as when she started sleeping.
And then she finds herself in a huge ice cavern, the glistening ice letting the shadows of other asteroids dance on the walls. The centerpiece of the cavern is a massive ring of frozen mercury encircling the cavern, the wreckage of thousands of ancient ships floating near the center.
As the mercury starts to melt and gather the woman starts turning the behemoth around to go back through the crack, content to leave this find to the archeologists. She’s only half way through the turn when the mercury starts spinning, first the edges of it start sliding clockwise, and then the middle starts moving anticlockwise, until the ring is a spinning torrent of silver liquid reminding her of her morning runs around the rotating sections of the ship.
She turns on a maximum burn of 30 seconds as the ring seems to reach its peak speed; racing desperate for the exit, a look of worry on her face. Then a great flash of light bursts forth from the center of the ring, as the mercury flows seamlessly to the center forming a solid mirror, half the size of the moon in diameter.
2 hours later, Far far away on the Misers Delight, a man watching his own swarm of drones sees a red flash, and a bright red line that doesn’t seem to end.
“Oh...” is all he says.