Chapter Eighty-One - Mystery on Jupiter

Day wasn’t expecting too much from her mining station on Metis, so when she got a positive return, it took her by surprise.

The ping wasn’t anything too grandiose. Something metallic had passed through the scanning radius of her station on Metis, and the spectrography sensors had read it as a metallic alloy for the split second they had a lock on the item.

That was still enough for the station’s rudimentary AI to send Day a report.

“Just to be entirely clear,” Candle asked. “What are the chances that it’s a natural occurring phenomena?”

“It’s not entirely impossible,” Day said. “Most of Jupiter’s composition is gaseous, but it stands to reason that some metals and more dense materials will be caught and flung around. Jupiter must have captured thousands, millions of asteroids, and there’s a surprising lack of wrecks around Jupiter’s orbit compared to, say, Mars. There were fewer ships and stations here to begin with, of course, but... I suspect a number of them were pushed into Jupiter’s grasp.”

“So it could just be a human station whipping around Jupiter’s storm that we happened to catch a glimpse of,” Candle said.

“It’s plausible that it’s that,” Day affirmed. “But it doesn’t mean that it’s likely. Nova had some data on stations within Jupiter’s clouds, didn’t she?”

They didn’t quite have that data themselves, though, but it was easy to relay a request to Dawn--who was closer to Io at the moment--and then over to Nova with exactly that query.

A few hours later, Day received a packet of sensor data from Nova. It was old. Sensor data that started pre-Accord, back when the system was busy with human traffic. Ships were zipping around, heading to various research and extraction stations either in orbit around Jupiter or around one of the planet’s moons. There were colonies on a few of those moons, though they were quite tiny, nothing compared to the colonies on Mars.

Some of that shipping came and went, usually towards the inner system, but on rare occasions outwards.

Day checked the dates (still using the Earth calendar) and confirmed that most outbound traffic was heading towards Saturn. Even then, it was no more than one ship every few months.

Nova had been kind enough to point out the discrepancy that Day was looking for already.

Some ships hovered close to Jupiter’s surface and disappeared only to reappear much later. Usually these were the same ships, with research company IFFs. Other times cargo would be lost near Jupiter and still other times there were ships that would leave one station, skim close to Jupiter, then arrive at another station significantly lighter.

“Yeah, something fishy’s going on,” Candle said. “Think whatever’s down there is still functional?”

“It’s possible. NOVA QUANTUM still functioned when we arrived, even if she had some difficulties, and Night’s station was... not in great shape, but it was still somewhat operational. The problem will be actually exploring anything within Jupiter’s atmosphere.”

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“We’ll have to build something explicitly for it,” Candle said.

That was what Day was thinking too.

So she dropped off some equipment on Metis with more heat to upgrade the station and its telescopes, then she flew back out towards Io.

Night was in the process of salvaging one of the captured logistics ships, but when Day asked her for help, she set a few small projects aside for her.

“Yeah, I suppose I can help,” Night said. “I do have other, more important stuff to get to, so don’t waste too much of my time, alright?”

“Of course not,” Day said. “I’m thinking we’ll need a set of drones capable of resisting and manoeuvring through Jupiter’s atmosphere.”

“Complicated,” Night said. “Well, maybe not that complicated if we don’t bother pressurising it. But having enough thrust to move around will require lots of hydrogen to burn. Yeah, let me see what I can do. We don’t want to build something from scratch, do we?”

“If we can get away with using parts from drones we already have in stock then that would be fine,” Day said. “But I suspect that we’re going to have to use a lot of custom parts for this one.”

“Your hobbies are always so expensive, Day,” Night said.

“This isn’t a hobby,” Day said.

“Sticking your nose into trouble is absolutely your hobby,” Night replied.

Day frowned. She couldn’t think of a single time when she’d stuck her metaphorical nose into any trouble. What was Night talking about? It was hard to think, however, when Candle was laughing at her.

“Shush you, or we’ll send you down to Jupiter yourself,” Day threatened.

Candle laughed. “I don’t know, could you handle me not being around for so long?” she asked.

“I managed before, you know,” Day said. “I hardly need you to be a successful ERF ship.”

Candle sniffed. “You grew up so fast while I wasn’t around,” she said.

They continued to poke at each other while Night put something together. When she was done, she had a transport drone carry it up from the surface of Io in a large container. Night had built three drones, with enough sensors on them to pierce even Jupiter’s constant storms, at least from up close. “Send us anything you find,” Night said. “Nova’s curious about our... I guess our neighbours.”

“Will do,” Day promised before securing the cargo to her hull and boosting back planet-ward.

In passing, she noticed Dawn was nearly done setting up her own mine. “Need help?” Dawn asked.

“If you have the time to spare, sure,” Day said. “Do you think you can improve Metis’ surveillance system? It’s not quite good enough at the moment.”

“Sure, that seems easy enough,” Dawn said.

Day was happy that her sisters were as curious as she was. She didn’t imagine that it would be as helpful or as important as setting up more mines, but at the same time, her curiosity demanded to be satisfied.

***