Chapter Sixty - Rocking Around

“Alright,” Day said. “I’ll see the two of you around?”

“Yeah, not like I intend to move around too much,” Night said. “You’ve left me with so much work.”

“Got to keep you busy somehow,” Day replied. “Can’t have you sitting here and doing nothing but simulate beaches with NOVA QUANTUM all day.”

“Hmph,” Night replied. “Well, whatever. I guess... don’t run into an asteroid or anything.”

“Thanks, Night,” Day said. That was sweet, coming from Night.

“Goodbye, Daybreak on Ceres,” NOVA QUANTUM said. “And safe travels. Do return if you happen across anything interesting. My research schedules are filling in for the next four decades, but there’s room past that for additional new ideas, and as my processing powers grow, the list becomes shorter.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way to keep busy,” Day replied. “Good bye guys.”

Day opened up the unfolding panels of her prototype French drive and pushed a bit of power into the system. The loose atmosphere above Io happened to be one of the best places to use those drives, what with the incredible number or loose particles floating about.

She boosted around the planet, accelerating faster and faster until her flight pattern was elliptical and she was leaving a sparkling trail of charged particles in her wake. Then she fired up her main reaction thrust for a last boost and sling-shotted herself out of Jupiter’s orbit.

Her goal was the belt again, but not the section they lived in. No, she was aiming for the spot where Twilight had run off to. With The Weeping of Mothers and Dawn taking care of Ceres and constructing their new sister, and Night and Nova canoodling on Io while breaking down the occasional captured ship, Day felt like she had nothing in particular to do, so she aimed herself towards Twilight, who she figured could maybe use some company.

That depended on Day finding Twilight, though. As she rocketed closer to the belt, Day shut down the French drive. It interfered quite badly with her sensors, but she wasn’t sure what to do about it. Maybe they could have the sensors be placed on a mobile antenna far from the drive? But the interference bubble was too large, so unless the pole for the antenna was massive... no, that wouldn’t work. The newer models of the French drive were even louder and more noticeable. She was certain that Twilight had seen her coming already.

Still, the cheap acceleration was worth it in many ways.

Day started to scan through the belt and found a lot of nothing. Then she narrowed the scope of her search down. Instead of looking for bright spots of electromagnetic interference or spots of heat, she started looking for black spots against the backdrop of stars.

That proved surprisingly intensive, and she found herself throwing up hundreds of false-positives. Every flicker of darkness had to be checked, and that was also taking up a surprising amount of time.

It took her three days to spot Twilight, and when she did it was only because her sister was within a thousand kilometres of her and closing in fast.

“Found you!” Day sent with a tight beam.

A moment later all her sensors lit up with missile-lock warnings and Day reflexively fired her side thrusters and spun herself around hard while deploying her PD guns.

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“Hah! Made you jump!” Twilight said over a tight beam.

Day paused as the alerts died down, then she retracted her weapons and stood down. “Alright, fine, you got me,” she said. “How long have you been sneaking up on me?”

“Since you left Jupiter. I could see you all the way over here. Those drives are stupid-loud.” Twilight spun around and burned her hydrogen engine for a moment to match velocities with Day. “What are you doing out here? Burned too hard?”

“No, I came to see what you were up to,” Day said. “I was getting a little worried.”

“Aww, that’s sweet, but I can take care of myself,” Twilight said.

“I know. But you’re still all alone out here, and I’m still going to worry. What were you up to, by the way?”

Twilight sent Day some sensor data, then a lot more. A large portion of it was spectrographic readings of various asteroids across the belt. Day checked their locations, and then mapped out the route Twilight had taken to get where they were, a quarter of the way around the sun from Ceres.

“You’ve been busy,” Day said. “And you found some decent stuff. I’m seeing at least four, maybe five good mine locations.”

“Small ones, though,” Twilight said.

“That’s not a bad thing,” Day said. “Every bit helps.”

“Hmmp, well, fine. You have some drones on you? There’s one site not too far from here. Could head over and clear out a surface to place a mine on it. Wouldn’t take more than a couple of days.”

“I’m down for that,” Day said. “But I don’t have any of the equipment we’d need for a full mine.”

“We can just clear out the space then tell The Weeping of Mothers to send some drones out here with all that stuff,” Twilight said. “Worse case I’ll pop back over once everything’s stationary around the rock and supervise for a day or two.”

“Okay, cool,” Day said.

They approached a large asteroid that was on the inner fringe of the belt, and Twilight came to a complete stop relative to the rock while Day approached it much more and deployed her drones. It was a nickel heavy chunk of space rock, but it had lots of trace metals in it as well, Germanium and gold were especially high.

“Nice rock,” Day said.

“Thanks,” Twilight said. “You’re the rock expert here.”

“Hey now, don’t need to be jealous just because the Ticking of the Clock technically has seniority over you,” Day said.

“... What? How can it have seniority over me! It’s literally just a rock.”

“It was around for longer.”

“It’s a rock! It can’t even move under its own power.”

“And yet it beat you into joining the ERF,” Day said as her drones started to clear out a flat space on the asteroid while others planted pinions to start setting up a very basic structure.

“I can’t believe you,” Twilight grumped. “Putting a rock ahead of me.”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure one day you’ll be just as stealthy as Ticking is.”

“I hate you,” Twilight said. “And here I was gonna invite you to check out this cool wreck I found.”

That perked Day’s attention right up. “A cool wreck?”

“Nah, you wouldn’t like it, it doesn’t have any rocks.”

***