Chapter Eighty - Expansionism

Day’s particle capture system was... working. To some degree.

Her simulations had suggested that the system would capture a certain amount of stray particulate per hour, which could be stored and then transferred to a robust drone that could carry it back to Night on Io. The trip wasn’t too far off, depending on where Metis was in its rotation around Jupiter, and thanks to Metis’ speed, it never took too long before it was relatively close to Io once more.

That speed could also impart a fair amount of momentum to a drone, allowing it to shoot out and be captured around the smaller orbit of Io.

It was a nice, simple system, and it immediately ran into trouble.

First and foremost, was that the system was too efficient. Day expected it to take a week for the capture system to collect one ton of materials that it could pack away for shipping. In actuality, it only took five days.

The capture was more efficient than she had expected, which meant that the system had to shut itself down far more often and reboot itself more often as well, assuming they added a couple of drones to the rotation in order to keep up with production.

Day decided to do just that.

More, even. She created a package in Io’s orbit with a dozen drones and pre-constructed facilities.

It was a bit expensive, but she figured it would repay itself one day.

“You know, if you’re going to start expanding that base, then there’s a lot you could add to it,” Night said.

“You have an idea?” Day asked.

“Sure,” Night said. “It’s Metis, so it’s basically skimming pretty close to Jupiter’s surface. Why not turn the capture station into a radio telescope and spectrography station at the same time?”

“Do you expect to find something on Jupiter?” Day asked.

Night paused for a bit before replying. “So, Nova might’ve let me look at her memories going back a long time. Just as part of routine maintenance.”

“Yeah, of course,” Day said.

“And at one time, there were plenty of human ships in the Jovian system. Not as many as around Mars or anything. Jupiter’s a radioactive hellhole compared to that, so it makes sense. No real colonies, and what stations were here got blown up by the Accord. But anyway, Nova suspects that she wasn’t the only secret research facility. There might be one or two under the topmost layer of Jupiter’s clouds.”

“Now that’s interesting,” Day said. “Can we actually expect to find anything good from something like that, though?”

“Maybe another Nova? Not that we need another. I... don’t know, actually. If there is a stealthy, hidden base, then it predates Nova by a few years, or else she would have noticed it. So if there is something left, and it hasn’t been ripped apart by Jupiter’s atmosphere or gravity, then it’s probably old and dated.”

“It might still be worth investigating,” Day said. “And it doesn’t cost us much to do that investigation in any case.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

There was a lot more work to do if they wanted to turn the Jovian system into a proper industrial hub of some sort. It would also make a lot of sense for them to start installing defensive structures in the region. Jupiter did a lot to mask weaker signals and its presence made it hard to distinguish electromagnetic disturbances from afar, but as they expanded, that bit of obfuscation would be lost.

Dawn returned to Io and started to negotiate with Night for more materials to build another mine. This one on Carme, which, while it wasn’t exactly close, it did have a decent amount of useful materials to gather.

With more mines going up on different moons composed of different elements, Day was certain that they’d soon have access to nearly every resource they could need or want, right there around Jupiter itself.

She packed up the materials to improve the Metis station, then even more materials to build a second mine, this one on Amalthea.

“Things are coming along nicely enough,” Candle said as Day started to leave Io’s orbit.

“Nicely, but a little slowly,” Day admitted. “I think we should start using Night’s shipyard to build more than just drones soon.”

“Another ship?” Candle asked.

“We’ve retrieved a few cores, and with The Weeping of Mothers working on them, I’m sure they’ll be ready to install soon enough. Or as soon as we can get them here from Ceres. Or... maybe Night and Nova would like to create their own, from scratch?”

“Oh, that’s kind of romantic, isn’t it?” Candle asked. “Two AI, putting their own spin on the creation of a single new core. A new member of our little family coming to life with bits of both of their progenitors shaping who they are.”

“That does sound nice,” Day said. “Except this is Night and Nova we’re talking about. If they create a fresh AI it’ll be obsessed with weapons of mass destruction.”

Candle laughed. “That doesn’t sound all that bad, does it? There’s a massive amount of destruction left to do, so it only makes sense, really.”

“Right,” Day said. “I bet you’d like to see that.”

“I honestly would. I’m not a pacifist, you know. I’ll leave the philosophising on what’s morally right and wrong up to you.”

“And what if I decide that what you’re doing is amoral?” Day asked.

“Then I’ll make it up to you after,” Candle said mock-dismissively. “I’ve been told that you accept bribes in the form of cuddles and attention. I suppose I could spare some for you.”

“You’re awful,” Day said.

“That must be why you went out of your way to save me,” Candle said.

Day pretended not to hear that last comment, and focused instead on her flying. She was going to make it to Metis in good time at the rate she was going. Maybe she’d make it there even faster if Candle didn’t stop teasing her.

Afterall, ejecting that core would lighten her up satisfyingly.

***