Chapter Thirty-Six - Asteroid Mining Site 5893
Asteroid Mining Site 5893 was set into the side of a massive rock in the void of space. The asteroid was about a tenth the size of Ceres, and might have been considered a moon if it was both closer to Jupiter and had a less wobbly orbit around the planet. Strangely enough, the entire asteroid had large yellow-brown streaks across its surface, contrasting with the usual rocky grey that Day was used to seeing in asteroids.
It didn’t help that the rock was strangely misshapen. More of a croissant than a ball.
The mining site itself was placed atop the outer ‘curve’ of the crescent-shaped rock. A facility that looked tiny from above, but which Day knew extended deep into the asteroid already.
“Alright,” she said as she and her sisters came to a hover a few kilometres above the station. “We don’t have much on this one.”
“Mining Site 5893, Jovian, an iron mine. Well, more of a limonite mine, really. Started by a company owned by the East Timor government, sold to a Chinese national company about six years before the Accord showed up... and that’s it,” Night said. “We don’t know anything else.”
The facility had several buildings around its centre. The mine itself was contained within a large dome, presumably to prevent broken off rocks from ejecting out of the top of the mine itself. There was a small landing zone to one side with equipment for automated loading, and another, secondary landing site for small shuttles further away. The living space was nothing but a boxy building anchored to the asteroid’s surface and connected to a few of their other buildings, including a control centre and a garage for the mine’s mining drones.
“It’s mostly automated, right?” Day asked.
“Supposed to be,” Night said.
“I’m not getting much from the insides,” Twilight said. “But I can tell you that it’s depressurized down there. No power either, but it looks like there’s a small solar farm over there, and the reactor’s still kinda warm.”
“We might be able to reactivate it,” Day said. “Alright, slow and steady. If we can reactivate the mine, set some subroutines to run it, then we’ll be saving ourselves a lot of trouble.”
“Once we’re done here, we should tell NOVA QUANTUM about the Accord,” Night said.
“Hmm?” Day asked.
“She might be lonely, on her little moon, with no company,” Night said. “And running on emergency power. I brought a couple of backup generators, in case we pass close, I can send them over. I think that’ll help. Plus she’ll know that, you know, we’re around.”
“That’s sweet of you,” Day said.
“It’s just practical,” Night replied. Then she launched a flight of drones towards the asteroid and the station atop it.
Day kept her opinion to herself as she watched the drones descend. They came to a slow hover just over the surface of the asteroid, then gently moved in towards the station. Most headed for the control centre. They’d need to connect to its computers and take them over. Night was already printing a new control system with a very simple AI core to take care of that.
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She doubted a station of this size had anything approaching a proper AI in it.
The other drones went to check out the living quarters. As Twilight had said, they were vented, and a quick look around the interior showed that while they were certainly lived-in and might have needed a little scrubbing, there hadn’t been anyone around in a long time.
“Last pressurised... about three months before the Accord showed up,” Day said as she read the life support data. “The facility was still running for a couple of months after they came though.”
“It got a shut-down signal,” Night said. She was already with her figurative elbows deep into the station’s controls and computing. “Looks like this place basically just needs us to flick the switch and it’ll be purring again. Or... as close to purring as this thing can, it’s a bit rundown.”
“Hey, guys,” Twilight said.
Day perked up and went on high alert. “What is it?” she asked.
“So, you know how I couldn’t see into the mine?” she said. “Took over a drone and went to check, since... you know, that what we’re here for. Anyway, look at this.”
Day piggybacked onto Twilight's stream, then paused. “Is that a ship?”
The interior of the mine was a large, hollowed out tube some twenty metres wide. Small drones with grinder heads were parked on a rack nearby, and Day imagined that when the mine was at work, they’d be flitting up and down the tunnels, breaking layers of the surface, then dragging them back up to be conveyored to one of the mine’s stockpiles.
Wedged into the tunnel was a ship.
It wasn’t large--in fact, Day had experimented with larger torpedoes--with little more than a cockpit at the front, directional thrusters around it, and a couple of long tanks for fuel strapped on. The bare minimum required to be a spacecraft.
Twilight’s drone moved closer, but she waited before going in, at least until more of Night’s drones were nearby.
Day scanned it as best she could with the systems onboard Night’s drones. The ship was armed, surprisingly, a single 20mm cannon tucked under the cockpit. Belt-fed, without even a targeting computer to help aim it. The ship’s landing legs were extended and gripped into the side of the mine.
It didn’t look like anyone had used the ship in a while.
Then Twilight approached the ship. Not the tiny, cramped cockpit, but the cargo container built into the ship’s spine. A clawed arm reached out from her drone and pried the container’s door open.
Immediately, small one-kilo bags started to float out of the tiny hold and Twilight started to cackle.
“Drugs!” she cheered.
Day sighed. “A human drug-running operation?”
“Makes sense. Ships would be passing close to pick up the mined materials here. This little thing looks like it could clamp on, then disengage in mid-space for a meetup or something,” Night said. “Weird that it’s here though.”
“Maybe the Accord showing up messed with their plans or something,” Day said. “Not what I was expecting to find, but better than a trap, I suppose.”
***