CHAPTER 10: AMBERLEE - SPACE DETECTIVE TWIN
“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
— André Gide
It was all dark, and Amberlee felt nothing. In the stillness, she was half-asleep, passing the time in a vague dreamscape. She mused, philosophizing to keep herself just awake enough. Sometimes, it took several tries to form a complete thought, each one coming to her all-too-rapidly, lacking a logical sequence. Other times, she found herself repeating ideas endlessly, until her subconscious finally gave her something concrete to resolve.
What the hell was she doing? She was in it again—this reckless pursuit, always for the money, even when survival wasn’t on the line. Chasing desires. Never for the show, not really. The show itself was morbid, ghoulish even, pushing the ethical boundaries of entertainment to the lowest rung, barely skirting the indecency of broadcasting live suicides—wait, hadn’t she seen that before? Yet somehow, the spectacle always found a way to outdo itself, reaching new, grotesque heights under the guise of entertainment.
Amberlee shook off her spiraling thoughts. Focus. If she was going to solve Molly-Cat’s death, she first needed to solve the mystery of Caitlin’s Comet. Arrogant as it seemed, she knew she was smarter than most of the idiots joining her on this ride. At least she wasn’t overconfident. She was mostly awake now.
A blue light struck her face, and Amberlee, now in the observation deck of a spaceship, stared in awe, almost disbelieving. Through the viewport, she witnessed something unreal—an honest-to-god Dyson Tree growing out of the comet. Like something straight out of those old frontier space-travel stories they taught in school.
Before the invention of the Jodorowsky Drive, humanity had attempted to colonize space by planting super-seeds in comets, hoping they would grow into habitats. The tree would spread its roots deep into the ice, consume the comet’s elements, and eventually sprout. Once it breached the surface and greeted the sun, it would generate breathable atmosphere inside the comet’s voids before growing to completely encompass the celestial body. A self-sustaining habitat floating through space.
She had read about them, sure, but to see one? Amberlee had never seen anything like this before. Nobody alive had.
Caitlin’s Comet was unreal. Magical. A giant tree spiraled in all directions from the surface of the comet, wispy off-white clouds encircling its leaves in a perfect, miniature atmosphere. It was breathtaking, impossible to believe that it existed. From far away, it had been nothing but a blue dot, but as the Hohenzollern Excelsior approached, Amberlee could make out the twisting branches and the legria-colored leaves.
Ah, the legria leaves. She knew that color well—discovered only after humanity had spent time in space. A strange blend of white, green, and blue all at once. Ancient Terrans, she recalled, hadn’t even been able to see the color blue. How they had described the sea as “wine-dark” in old literature had always fascinated her. The intellectual allure of it almost distracted her from the chilling reality of where she was.
She pulled her focus back. Beyond the spaceship, beyond the comet, lay the true wine-darkness. The vast, cold expanse of space—the Horror Vacui. She shouldn’t be here. No one should.
“This stupid show,” she muttered.
Amberlee clapped her hands, and her AVP flickered to life, capturing her thoughts and senses.
"This is me, the real Amberlee. You know the story about Caitlin’s Comet, so I won’t bore you with those details again, lol. Is everyone ready to make history with the space detective twin, Amberlee? My sister, Molly-Cat, is right here with me in spirit. You know it, everybody. I’ll see you guys again soon, when I will be the first person to take a step on Caitlin’s Comet in nearly two hundred years. Ciao."
She clapped again, and the transmission ended, but she felt sick—not physically, but emotionally. The performance made her stomach churn. She pulled out her flexipad and immediately deleted the recording, tossing away the phony front. She clapped her hands again.
“My name is Amberlee Olavi. I’m sure you’ve heard of me. Listen up, guys. This is not a fantasy. This is all for real. You know the deal, right? This is the reality Replay, Disastronauts. I am one of seven cast members. The purpose of this program is to put a bunch of people someplace where stupidity is lethal. But I’m less concerned with the potential danger than I am about figuring out just what the hell happened here, and really busting this mystery.”
She groaned, stopping halfway through the playback. Delete. Try again.
This time, an idea hit her. She opened a calligraphy app and grabbed her smartpixel stylus, writing in the air in bubbly, loopy letters—a style she'd kept since she was a tween because it still felt cute. Once she was satisfied with the large, handwritten words, she gave them a slap. The letters spun around 180 degrees, facing the "audience."
Look behind you! :)
She smiled, then tapped her flexipad to rotate the point of view away from her and onto the Dyson Tree, stretching across the comet. No words. Just the sight of it—majestic, unexplainable, and real.
But Amberlee was already solving the first riddle in her mind. The comet was no longer alone. Caitlin’s Comet had been perturbed—gravitating around a much larger asteroid, throwing it out of its usual trajectory. Now, it was nestled deep in the Kuiper Belt.
Surely, she thought, someone had figured that out by now.
Aerial surveillance of the mining outpost showed it nestled in a bald patch among the Dyson Tree's vast "forest" of branching protrusions. The most noticeable feature of the site was the gigantic open mine pit, a yawning crater that descended deep into the comet's surface. It resembled a reverse ziggurat, plunging down instead of towering up—its vast scale reminded Amberlee of the thousand-year-old Mir mine in Russia, which she’d once seen on an old show. The pit alone was staggering, but it was surrounded by an elliptical arrangement of structures, huddled together like survivors of some great calamity.
LIDAR scans returned a projection of the small colony. Nine distinct buildings, mostly interconnected by enclosed passageways, marked the colony's heart. Amberlee asked the ship’s AI to analyze the data, half-listening as the readout scrolled across her flexipad. Most of it was technical jargon she didn’t care for, so she scrolled quickly to the summary at the bottom.
“Station is in reserve-power mode, likely for personnel to monitor and maintain essential systems for survival until help arrives.”
She sighed. "Yeah, it’s a bit late for that."
Curiosity tugged at her. "What were they mining?" she asked.
The AI paused before responding, then offered an educated guess. A new sheet of data appeared.
“Ice VII is a crystalline form of water that is created under extremely high pressure. It is one of the many phases of ice, formed at pressures above 2 GPa (20,000 times atmospheric pressure) and temperatures above 710 K (437 °C or 818 °F). Ice VII is denser and more ordered than common ice forms, making it useful for high-pressure experiments and for studying the interiors of icy planets and moons. Terran Use: Ice VII could potentially have implications for climate change mitigation. If harnessed for carbon capture and storage, it could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow the rate of global warming.”
Amberlee laughed out loud. "It’s a bit late for that, too."
Suddenly, Huis' voice rang out from every intercom, ordering the cast members to assemble at the airlock in fifteen minutes.
She frowned. Great timing, she thought. She had just begun to dig deeper into the data, particularly about potential dangers ahead. It was almost as if Huis had intentionally cut short her window for preparation—keeping her from arming herself with the information that might actually matter.
Amberlee hastily shrugged her body into her spacesuit, her heart racing as the suit pressurized tightly around her. She nearly yelped, having forgotten how snug it felt upon sealing. But there was no time for second thoughts—her focus was on getting suited up and out of the airlock before the others caught up. She’d be damned if anyone beat her to the punch.
Deliver the goods to the company. Earn that Triple-A rating. It was all Amberlee cared about. All she had to do was solve the mystery of the comet first, ideally in a flashy, dramatic way that would make her the star. And if she could make first contact with some ancient sentient technology, well, that would be a bonus. Even Dyson Tree technology didn’t seem far-fetched anymore, given what they’d discovered recently. Nothing seemed impossible now.
She clapped her AVP online, framing herself perfectly against the entrance to the locker room airlock. She struck a pose, confidently facing the camera just as the rest of the crew—her rivals—trickled in. She saluted them, wearing her best fake grin.
The first to enter was the buffoon, Mike, swaggering in with his usual goofy rhyming, followed by God Love Omega, the ridiculous giant whose biceps were practically a sideshow all on their own. Amberlee could barely suppress an internal laugh at the absurdity of it. Then came Emily Smith, already suited up in her retro-looking blue, white, and orange gear, complete with an unnecessary pair of goggles under her visor. And then Shephatiah Jones, dripping in like sewage water.
Amberlee felt her lips tighten into a thin line when she saw Shephatiah. She immediately forced her mind away from the history they shared—now was not the time to rehash old grudges. Maybe later. She barely noticed Hajime Mashite, the dissonant pop-idol, slip inside quietly behind Shephatiah. But she was there, looking as out of place as ever.
And, of course, Huis. The sleazy producer stood back, using his AVP to record everything with his signature smugness. Amberlee could practically feel his gaze on her, and the thought of it made her skin crawl.
Not interested in hearing him ramble, Amberlee took control. "You all know me," she said, flashing her most camera-ready smile. "I’m Amberlee, and I come bearing gifts!" She gestured toward the state-of-the-art Olavi Corp apparel fabricator stationed nearby. "I’m sure you’ve all brought spacesuits, but as a special treat, how about an upgrade? Courtesy of me." She delivered the line with the fakest enthusiasm she could muster.
She knew none of them could beat her to the scoop, even with the head start she had. But why not give them some shiny toys to play with while she raced ahead?
“Free cool, state-of-the-art, up-to-date fashion!” she said, her voice dripping with insincerity.
Mike’s eyes lit up in awe, his mouth hanging open like a puppy staring at a new chew toy. Amberlee smirked internally. Mike was a child trapped in a grown man’s body. He was hopeless.
"Migesus? Come over here, buddy. You go first," she said, beckoning him over.
Mike shuffled over, his sheepish grin making him look even more ridiculous. "My daddy says I’m not allowed to pick out my own space suits anymore," he mumbled.
Amberlee’s eye twitched, but she maintained her smile. "What? Why?" she asked, indulging him, knowing she would regret it.
Mike chuckled, preparing to deliver what he clearly thought was the punchline of the century. "I'm just unlucky," he said with a goofy laugh.
No one else even cracked a smile. Those who were paying attention barely registered his comment.
Amberlee clapped him on the shoulder, offering a look of sympathy she didn’t remotely feel. "Well, I hope it turns out better for you this time, buddy." She gestured toward the fabricator’s console, bringing up a selection of design options. "Just pick what you like."
As soon as Mike’s attention shifted to the terminal, Amberlee slipped away, moving stealthily toward the second-stage airlock. She didn’t even bother looking back as the door sealed behind her.
"Here we go, everybody," Amberlee whispered to her AVP, grinning wickedly.
The key difference between her suit and the ones her castmates would be receiving? Hers was equipped with a sophisticated array of cutting-edge tech, including a personal arsenal of miniature deviant-technological antipathy.
Theirs? Not so much.
Amberlee chuckled to herself. She had no intention of losing this game, no matter how much they played along. She was already several steps ahead.
The ship moored directly to the docking platform of the mining station. Amberlee exited the airlock and stepped out onto a carbon fiber platform at the top of a towering megastructure, the manufactured environment starkly contrasting with the asteroid landscape surrounding it. Everything here screamed of mankind's past obsession with 3D printing, an era when humans eagerly mass-produced infrastructure for the new frontier. The building in front of her, perched atop the platform, had the same modular, fabricated look—cold, utilitarian, and soulless.
She paused for a moment, looking back at the elliptical-shaped umbilical passageway that connected the platform to the floating hotel ship above. The ship’s massive bulk blocked out the faint light of Alpha Centauri, casting a strange shadow across the comet’s surface. Amberlee's eyes shifted to the colossal asteroid that loomed over the comet—an unnatural orbit, as if the comet had been perturbed and trapped in this gravitational dance.
“Say goodbye to the ship, everybody,” she muttered into her AVP feed, keeping the facade of enthusiasm barely alive.
She glanced at the AirScan 3000 on her right arm and took in the readings. "Ranging from minus fifteen to thirty-five degrees Celsius? How is that even possible?" She furrowed her brow. "There must be an advanced thermal management system inside the comet, releasing heat somehow. We’re too far from Alpha Centauri for it to have any effect here. It should be closer to minus four hundred degrees."
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Her words echoed in her helmet, but the eeriness of the place silenced any sense of awe. Something wasn’t right.
From her high vantage point, Amberlee had a perfect view of the entire landscape. The scene stretched out before her like a surreal painting, the comet’s surface dotted with strange structures and the enormous tree wrapping itself around the celestial body. For a moment, she let herself absorb it all. This was the shot—the one that would make viewers gasp. The vastness of space stretched endlessly in every direction, stars scrolling past in what was called the "Animated Sky." The rotation of the comet created artificial gravity, pulling her toward the surface as it slowly spun through the void. Amberlee could’ve done the math in her head—figured out the rotational speed, the necessary force—but she felt a slight twinge of anxiety at the thought. Her brain refused to reward her with dopamine for crunching numbers right now. She was supposed to be making entertainment, not science.
She tore her eyes from the stars and turned her focus to the building in front of her—a strange, lifeless structure. Its front bore a long, narrow passageway that led to a door. A big door. Three meters by three meters, with small displays flickering in a dull orange glow. Amberlee's face twisted into a scowl. She had no real intel on this place, no idea what to expect. What little she had gathered was speculative, at best. Charging in like this was reckless, maybe even suicidal.
“There’s no power,” she muttered, shaking her head. “This is just stupid.”
The thought lingered in the back of her mind that maybe she should call it. Huis hadn’t told her anything useful, and she was going in blind. But that gnawing impulse to push forward—maybe the same one that had kept her taking risk after risk for the thrill of it—won out again.
Amberlee pressed her hand against the door, feeling for something, anything. “Every door needs a handle,” she said to herself, trying to keep a spark of confidence alive. Her fingers found shallow grooves and rods embedded into the door. She tugged on them, unfolding a two-way slide-locking mechanism. With a hiss, the massive door parted by about a meter, though it could’ve opened much wider. She briefly considered closing it again, but dismissed the idea. No point in sabotaging things yet.
Beyond the door lay a larger space, dim and foreboding. The only lights came from those eerie orange dots in the gloom. Most were faint, but there was one outlier—a single, steady green diode beckoning her forward. Amberlee stepped carefully, her own suit lights dimmed for maximum dramatic effect. Creeping in the dark was much better for the audience than just flipping the lights on.
The green light led her to a relic—a truly ancient piece of tech. A visual display, complete with a keyboard, and so archaic it seemed like a museum exhibit. “They had better tech than this even back then,” she mumbled. “Must’ve been before aesthetics mattered. Or tragically after.”
Amberlee tapped a key, and the screen flickered to life, displaying an off-black background with lime-green text. Her brow furrowed. “This is old for old. And it’s in Portuguese? That’s a dead language.”
But Amberlee wasn’t too worried. Her AVP kicked in, overlaying an automatic translation onto her vision. Now, she could read the text as if it were in her native language. “Cool.”
After poking around the system for a few moments, she realized this wasn’t anything significant—just the environmental controls for the area. With a shrug, she activated the lights. Immediately, the building surged to life. Solid-locking mechanisms released with loud clanks, doors hissed open, and lights flickered on with an electrical crackle. The whole place buzzed with renewed energy, as if it had been asleep for centuries.
As the full lighting revealed the building’s interior, Amberlee could see it for what it truly was—another cold, modular megastructure, hastily fabricated out of carbon fiber. Everything here had the look of something churned out by a 3D printer. Most likely, the material had been stripped from the missing sections of the Dyson Tree to clear space for the facility. The whole thing felt sterile, mechanical, and lifeless—a far cry from the awe-inspiring sight of the tree itself.
“Just what were you all doing here?” she wondered aloud, glancing around the space, already calculating how this moment would look on-screen.
After that place, Amberlee moved through another door and descended several flights of stairs. She chose the stairs over an optional elevator—stairs were less likely to malfunction if things went south. At the bottom of the stairwell, a door labeled in yellow writing caught her eye:
PESSOAL/GUYS/PERSONNEL/INDIVIDUAL
Her AVP translator had begun doing a poor job with the more nuanced translations, so she stopped relying on it. She figured this entrance led deeper into the facility connected to the docking megastructure. Using her newfound skill at operating these ancient doors, she opened it without much trouble.
Taking a step across the threshold, she said with a grin, “First!”
The long corridor stretched out ahead of her, its silence unsettling. It felt like she’d stepped into the belly of a beast—this had to be part of the ship, the Xipe Totec itself. She strode down the length of the corridor until it split into an intersection, where an alternate route led up a small set of stairs. The walkway turned off perpendicularly, disappearing into another passage that she couldn’t see from where she stood.
“Anybody home?” she called out, her voice echoing down the empty halls. No response, but she knew how to check if anyone had been here recently.
Amberlee engaged the AirScan 3000 on her suit and read the data aloud. “Atmospheric composition: nitrogen, seventy-eight percent; oxygen, twenty-eight point-seven-eight-five percent; argon, zero percent; carbon dioxide, zero percent…”
Her attention immediately locked onto the lack of carbon dioxide. No one had been breathing in here—not for a long time. She thought for a moment about whether the mined Ice VII could have somehow absorbed all the CO2 from the colony’s atmosphere, but there wasn’t a way to check right now.
“Cliché,” she muttered. The whole setup felt like something out of a horror vid: a seemingly abandoned space facility, missing colonists, unexplained phenomena.
Still, something about the atmosphere intrigued her. It was oddly similar to the air back on Terra—practically perfect, even. By all accounts, it should’ve been safe to breathe. But logic screamed at her not to remove her helmet in an environment like this. Space had rules, and breaking them usually meant death.
Still, there was a nagging desire to be the first to take a breath here since the comet had reappeared. She needed to find the right spot.
Her eyes followed the hallway past the crossroads, spotting a glowing red sign above a door at the far end.
SAÍDA
No translation needed. The color said it all.
Amberlee jogged toward the exit sign, pushing through the door. A moment later, she was outside, and an expanse of glistening albedo stretched out before her. The reflection of distant light gave the surface a crystalline shimmer, casting the surrounding buildings in eerie shadows.
She took in the sight of the connected structures stretching counterclockwise from the ship—modular, prefabricated, utilitarian. Behind her, the mining ship, Xipetotec, faced North. To the West was a large industrial building that looked like a manufacturing plant. Pulling up the AI's recon data, she said aloud, “Material handling facility.”
To the East, the towering docking platform loomed, with the hotel ship hovering far above. Southward, beyond the material handling building, she spotted the top of another tall structure—probably the mine’s elevator shaft.
But what truly caught her attention was the structure at the far end of the expanse, half a kilometer away. A giant black ziggurat, lit with red-hued reserve power indicators, stood like an ominous sentinel over the landscape. Its dark form contrasted sharply with the slowly scrolling stars beyond it in the Animated Sky.
“The Central Processing Plant,” she muttered. “They sure knew how to build creepy back then.”
The ziggurat’s intimidating presence made her stomach churn—a symptom of Celestial Spin Sickness, a side effect of watching the Animated Sky for too long. She quickly averted her gaze, focusing on the ground below.
And then she saw it—exactly what she needed. Midway across the expanse, an immense yellow mining excavation vehicle sat abandoned. It was perfect. Dramatic, impressive, and right in the middle of this strange, forgotten landscape.
Amberlee’s mind raced. There was so much potential here.
It took Amberlee a few minutes to reach the heavy equipment. The machine was a behemoth: 10 meters tall, 15 meters wide, and 25 meters long. She scanned its stats. It weighed a solid 150 tons.
"Stellar Mining Corporation Comet Crawler. Advanced fusion-powered engine providing high torque and thrust…” she read aloud, her eyes narrowing.
"How fast does it go?" Amberlee’s gaze drifted down the readout, landing on the speed.
"Thirty kilometers per hour? Not bad." She smirked. "Let's see if I can get this beast going."
Amberlee withdrew a small device from a compartment concealed in her suit’s right arm-mounted scanner setup: a Nemesis Nest NanoSwarm XT-500 injector. The device was equipped with a biometric fail-safe mechanism to ensure no unauthorized access.
"Time to play," she muttered.
She palmed the injector in her right hand while using her left hand to detach the glove from her spacesuit. The glove fell away, still tethered to her wrist. As her bare hand met the open air, it felt... odd. Like dipping into a hot tub—dry and cold at first, but somehow warm and moist all at once.
Bending down, Amberlee scooped up a handful of the comet’s glittering albedo, letting it cascade through her fingers like fine sand. A rare smile crossed her lips.
"I should’ve done this in a bikini," she quipped to her AVP. "Too bad I didn’t pack one."
Despite the brief temptation to bask in the strange, almost comfortable environment, a nagging sense of danger tugged at her instincts. It was safe—for now—but her inner voice warned her she was being more reckless than usual.
"Let’s see the key to the kingdom, huh?" she muttered, trying to silence that inner voice.
Amberlee aimed the NanoSwarm injector at the Comet Crawler and pressed the device between her fingers. A shimmering cloud of nanobots—tiny, sparkling wisps—poured from the front of the injector. She watched as the swarm spread across the machine's metal surface, seeping into its seams like a living mist. Within moments, the crawler trembled, its power systems flickering to life.
Less than a minute later, Amberlee found herself on the crawler's back, gripping the hand-rail with one hand, the other clutching her helmet as the massive machine barreled across the silvery plains. The alien wind whipped her long yellow hair into a wild frenzy as she drove it remotely with her bare hand, steering the 150-ton beast with a casual flick of her wrist.
The air tasted... like air. It wasn’t foreign, but the albedo dust or something in the atmosphere dried her mouth. She felt a tightness in her chest—a mix of anxiety and exhilaration—both from the thrill of controlling this machine and the creeping thought that maybe, just maybe, breathing the alien air might catch up to her. But for now, her lungs felt fine.
Amberlee chose not to dwell on it. The anxiety was the same either way, and ignoring it took less effort.
She laughed into the AVP as the Comet Crawler tore donuts in the silvery soil, sending up a kilometer-high plume of dust into the comet’s thin atmosphere. She shouted a few lines for her fans, her voice half-drowned in the howl of the wind, reveling in the absurdity of it all.
By the time Amberlee felt emotionally drained from the joyride, she began to consider where she should actually take the massive machine she was piloting. That’s when she noticed something move—something she wasn’t responsible for. She had driven close enough to the Material Handling Facility to see its windows. Though dark, there was motion within the frames. Curious, she steered the crawler closer.
The machine rolled forward, then fell silent as she shut it down remotely. The whine of the propulsion system faded, leaving only the faint sound of what she thought was white noise coming from the facility’s windows. It sounded like fast, heavy raindrops, but something about it was off.
She peered closer. Inside the building, mineral debris was accumulating on the windows, piling high before collapsing in places, allowing light to filter through briefly before being covered again. From afar, what she’d seen must have been those shifting gaps of light, creating the illusion of movement.
When Amberlee tried to pull up recon data to investigate further, she found herself blocked. Of course. Huis had cut her access to the AI. The bastard was trying to nerf her progress so she wouldn’t scoop the rest of the nitwits on his show. A wave of spite rose in her—typical male hubris, underestimating her.
Determined, she pressed her face close to one of the small gaps in the sedimented windows and knocked on the glass. "Any robot miners in there?"
Satisfied she’d gotten what she could from her position, Amberlee climbed back into the crawler and fired it up again. She quickly navigated the control interface through her AVP, finding the autopilot function. Among the listed destinations, one caught her eye: Climatrol.
With a smack, she engaged the autopilot, hopping off the machine as it trundled southward, before eventually curving around the elevated passageways and stopping in front of a squat structure. The crawler came to a halt in front of the south side of the facility, and she powered it down, figuring the NanoSwarm was no longer useful. She tucked the injector away to recharge later.
Climatrol looked like it was built from oversized toy model kits—its upper half composed of four identical corner pieces locked down onto matching wall segments. She tried the door, but it was locked, the only access being a keypad.
"Welcome to the future," Amberlee muttered as she twisted her wrist sharply, activating her concealed echoblade. A subtle distortion shimmered around her hand. She sliced through the door with one smooth motion, cutting a cruciform pattern into it. The upper sections fell inward with a loud clang, and with two quick kicks, she knocked the remaining pieces aside.
The Japanese Model XT-500 Echo Blade collapsed back into her arm-gear as she surveyed the interior of Climatrol.
The inside was one large room, the floor a metal grate suspended above a cellar full of ductwork. Amberlee peered down the ventilation shafts below her feet and scoffed. "Yeah, no thanks. I’m not crawling through vents today."
She flicked the lights on, illuminating the room. In the corner, a cubicle housed a human-interface terminal with a liquid crystal display. Thirty seconds with the terminal was all she needed to determine that the air filtration in the Material Handling Facility was shot, the system incapable of functioning without new filters.
She navigated the Portuguese menus manually. With the station’s network down, Climatrol had been cut off entirely. No wonder no one had changed the filters remotely—if there even was anyone to do it.
A prompt appeared on the screen, asking if she wanted to dispose of the old filters. She confirmed, setting off a series of rumbling sounds as the facility’s systems began powering up. The air pressure shifted around her, noticeable even with her head and hand exposed to the environment.
Amberlee glanced over at the door she’d carved to get inside. "Oops, lol."
A passageway perpendicular to the entrance she’d come in from led back to the Material Handling Facility. She took that path, noticing it was actually part of a three-tiered tunnel system. She was in the middle tier, with a conduit running parallel above her head and another below her feet. In the lower path, she could see the ventilation system from Climatrol extending out.
Reaching the door at the end of the passage, Amberlee decided to put her helmet and glove back on before venturing inside, but found both now filled with gritty albedo. She rolled her eyes, frustrated.
"Design flaw," she muttered. "That’s what I get for marketing to the Feudal Tech crowd. Should’ve consulted the Oorties out here about this kind of thing."
She shook her gear, but the sand wouldn’t budge. The thought of her suit repressurizing around a bunch of comet dust made her stop and take stock of her situation. What was she even doing here? It was all so reckless. Sure, she could breathe and not freeze, but there could be radiation—probably was, actually. She paused, the weight of it settling in.
"Alright, guys," she said to her AVP, forcing a grin. "Big reveal time, hopefully. Miners handle materials, right? And this is a Material Handling Facility, so if there are any robot miners around, this should be the place."
She pressed her ear against the door. No sound, no white noise. Slowly, she opened it.
The facility was vast, the ceiling towering above her, and everything was covered in a thick layer of sediment. It felt like stepping into an ancient cavern, with piles of black sand turning large machines into boulders and smaller objects into stalagmites. Beneath the facade, she could make out the processing line—elevated platforms connecting heavy machinery, running the length of the building from the mine pit to the outside.
Then, she heard voices.
"Fuck!" she whispered, nearly jumping out of her skin.
Standing in the doorway on the northeast side were six people, most of them in Olavi Industries spacesuits. They were staring, wide-eyed, at the spectacle of the facility, too stunned to notice Amberlee at first.
As her eyes adjusted, Amberlee focused on a particular "stalagmite" near the group—a structure taller than most of them, except for the muscled guy who easily towered over two meters.
An epiphany struck. "I know what that is."
She confidently strode toward it, cutting through the dust and sediment. The others, taken aback, began to notice her presence. Slowly, everyone except the Japanese girl and the one wearing pointless goggles removed their helmets.
"I’m impressed you all made it this far," Amberlee said, a sly grin spreading across her face. "Just kidding. You guys ready to meet the locals?"
Before anyone could respond, Amberlee thrust both hands into the brittle cone-shaped mound, pulling them apart. The top collapsed in a cloud of dust. She backed away, waving the air clear as the sediment hung for longer than it should.
But then, it appeared.
As the dust settled, a big yellow robot, about the size of a person, emerged from beneath the debris.
Amberlee had found it. And it was spectacular.