Eris had a wide orbit around the sun, alternating between close seasons and distant seasons. During the distant seasons, its atmosphere, mostly made up of methane, would form a thin haze over the surface of the planetoid. However, as it swung closer to the sun, this atmosphere would begin to melt, and the surface methane would sublimate, becoming gaseous, creating an atmospheric cycle. This led to an effect known as the Eris Snowfall, wherein the planet’s atmosphere would snow down and settle on its surface during the closer solar seasons. This snow was, of course, toxic.
Yu Solarum watched from her window of her personal craft, dubbed the Interloper, a winged, angled metal ship, as it made its descent from Dysnomia to Eris proper. As the Interloper slipped into the light haze of the cold atmosphere, she watched as snowy methane began to gently fall back down to the surface of the planetoid in crystalline flakes. It was so frigid here that ice formed on the wings of the Interloper as it glided through the murk.
She sat back in her seat, trusting the pilot to land her down – she, of course, knew how to fly the Interloper, as basic piloting skills were a prerequisite for her to become a Director for the Kuiper Belt, and besides, the autopilot helped a lot. She to her aide, Serena, who was digging through notes from Eris’s farms, and whispered something about their three-jack game last night that made the woman chuckle. Being the Director of Communications, Yu was also tasked with Kuiper Object reconnaissance, and she was going in to check the Eris farms to ensure that all data transmitted through her corridors was accurate. This required a physical landing on the planet, both to check the servers physically and to ensure data came directly from the source. And while sure, it could’ve been done by someone lower down the chain, Yu preferred to make these types of trips herself. It added to her status, her ‘airs’ to do so, and so she commanded more respect for it. If not for that, it got her out of the office, at the very least.
The Interloper finally worked its way through the mists of the atmosphere, and started to skim the surface of Eris, her ridges and ice mountains spiking up like great frozen waves. There were four farms on Eris, two at the poles, and two on opposite sides of the equator. The southern farm’s dome rose in the distance, where the South Farm, a hub of data streaming from Eris to Dysnomia, sat beneath its purview. It was bleak here, at least on surface inspection. A desert of gray spread out in either direction, marked with craters that pocked the surface, and of course, the mountains. The Interloper wove through some of these formations, and soon, was upon the great South Farm dome.
The farm itself was dug into Eris by about a mile at its lowest point, and its tiered terraces were covered by a great tempered steel-glass double dome that had airlocks in its sides. It was all barely, hazily visible from her craft. The Interloper slowed now, and began to hover through its VTOL systems, waiting for one of the airlocks on the side of the dome to open. Yu could hear the pilot radioing to ground command in the southern farm, even from behind the cockpit doors, and once he had clearance, the ship began to slowly drift into the opening maw of the steel airlock doors. Then, the doors shut behind it, as though it were a great beast consuming the small craft, and the tube linking the outer dome with the inner dome pressurized, finally letting them into the misty terraces shielded and protected by the glass.
Yu looked out the window, and saw the great green platforms dug out of the sides of the man-made crater. Liquid water flowed from terrace to terrace, down to the central basin, which resembled a lake, where she knew the water was pumped up from, purified, and recycled. Great heat lamps on the metal support beams of the inner dome cast the farms in permanent white light, and gave the inner dome a warmth of roughly seventy degrees fahrenheit. Greenery bloomed all through the crater, a verdant bowl of life. There were structures strewn around the tiers, manmade barracks and telecommunication structures and storage facilities, and there were landing pads at the top of the crater, where the Interloper began to set down.
It hovered for a moment, before extending long, flat landing gear, and gently touching down on the octagonal tarmac. Then, Yu stood, and as the ramp unfolded out of the back of the craft, she stepped down with Serena and took a look around. From the landing pad, she could overlook the entirety of the farm. People were weaving through the layers and levels, and incline elevators bobbed up and down the greenery and beside the waterfalls. Yu took a deep breath of the recycled air, and slowly let it out. It smelled of fresh fruits and wheatgrass.
“Serena,” she said. “Where are the servers?”
Serena, whose thick black hair and deep brown complexion shone in the light, checked her PDA and said, “They’re below the basin. We’ll be taking a special elevator that’ll go below the water to the server room.”
“Indeed,” said a gruff voice from behind them. Yu turned around and came face to face with a stocky, rugged, red-bearded man who was taking off a pair of thick, oil stained gloves. He smiled and gave a quick wink. “Name’s Horton. I run the landing pads around here, and I’m also second in command here. Do maintenance from time to time, just to keep my skills sharp.”
Yu raised an eyebrow at him.
He shrugged. “Just thought introductions were in order. Since I’ll be the one guidin’ y’all down to the server room and such.”
“I see,” Yu said, walking up to him and extending her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Horton.”
He took her hand and shook it firmly. “Likewise, Director.”
Then, he gestured to a large slanted building jutting out from the side of the crater wall, and said, “This way, if you would.”
“Lead the way,” Yu said, following him over to the landing pad’s headquarters. Horton slipped a keycard into a slot by the door. It blinked green, and the door slid open, letting them into a small square room with three doors. Over the door to the right was a sign that read: SECURITY CORRIDOR. To the left, there was a sign that read: MAINTENANCE AND CARGO. Finally, on the door directly in front of them, there was a small keypad that, after Horton input a code, flipped open and revealed a set of elevator buttons. He called the elevator, and in a moment, the doors hissed open, revealing a small service car.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
“All aboard,” Horton said, gesturing for them to board the elevator. Yu stepped on first, then Selena, and finally, Horton, who turned around, and put in a code on the keypad inside the elevator. “Just puttin’ in the server code. This here’s a special elevator, seeing as you landed on our Administration Pad. Takes you right to the servers. With a view, at that.”
Just then, the elevator started to descend, and within moments, they were spat out onto an incline rail that shot straight down the crater wall. The glass of the elevator allowed for a beautiful view of the farms, and the network of bridges and people and hovercraft that buzzed around carrying crops and fertilizer and tools all over the southern farm of Eris. There was a true artistry to the infrastructure here, from beautifully carved metalwork on the bridges to the lovingly painted murals on the sides of the buildings, to even the ivy creeping up the walls of the cliff faces. The farms were truly beautiful places.
“Serena,” Yu said, folding her hands behind her back and turning to her aide. “Where is the fertilizer produced, do you know?”
“It’s produced locally,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Doctor McCullinay’s team on Arrokoth has found the tholins to make a fantastic fertilizer mixture.”
“Ah,” Yu said, turning her attention back to the farms. Serena had been in the Kuiper Belt for years, and was hand selected by her father to be her aide. Every day, she became more acquainted with the woman, and after a while she’d come to understand why Xiao had appointed Serena as her aide; the woman was two things if anything. Firstly, she was on top of things. Everything. She was a wealth of information about the Kuiper Belt and its goings on, and if Yu should ever have a question, Serena would be there to answer it expeditiously.
Secondly, she was pleasant.
Horton took the silence as an opportunity and said, “Indeed, since the tholins mixture has arrived to the farms, our output has increased by sixty percent! Quite the dramatic increase, but the nitrogen-potassium and tholins mixture has really helped.”
“I see,” Yu said. “Serena, what exactly are tholins?”
“From my understanding,” she said, tapping at her PDA, “they are organic materials created from inorganic materials. I’m unsure of further details, but Doctor McCullinay is doing a presentation soon on them. Would you like me to pencil you in for attendance?”
She thought about it for a moment, humming to herself lightly. “Yes, please do that.”
The elevator continued its descent for nearly two minutes, gliding past the farm terraces at a gentle, if quickened, pace. It then came to the great basin at the bottom of the crater, the reservoir, and it slipped into a small tube in the side of the crater wall. They found themselves plunged into darkness, only the light of the elevator to illuminate them, before finally, the elevator came to a halt, some three and a half minutes after it had departed the landing pad.
The doors slid open, and Horton stepped out, followed by Yu, and finally, Selena. They were in a metal, bare hallway, just a long rectangle with overhead lighting, a keypad beside them, and a door at the end. Yu stepped toward the door.
“Wait!” Horton said, putting his hand before her. “Hold on there. Got some systems to deactivate first.”
He went over to the keypad and inserted a code on its keyboard, and it when he finished, it chirped happily. With a laugh, he said, “Okay, we can go now. Security systems, you know how TerraGov is.”
Yu eyed him, and then the hallway, and nodded, before stepping off toward the door. Horton and Selena followed. At the door, Horton inserted a keycard, and let them into a large round chamber where multiple black servers, all encased in hard exterior shells, lined the walls in a great ring. Orderly cables, banded together with zip-ties, ran along the wall and into small ports. In the center of the room was a terminal that looked like an old podium and here was their objective.
“Here we are, the server room,” Horton said. “Over there, that’s the terminal that’ll let you validate all your data, Ms. Yu. Knock yourself out.”
Yu nodded, and stepped forward to the terminal. “Serena.”
“Yes Director?”
“I’m going to link my PDA with the terminal. I want you to link yours with mine and copy the data for backup purposes.”
“Yes, Director.”
At that, Yu pulled a small wire out of the side of her PDA and plugged it into the terminal. Immediately it blinked to life, her credentials being read via her PDA and access being granted almost instantly. Series of data started to scroll before her, all being checked against the nearly two terabytes of data that she’d stored on her PDA for this specific mission. She watched her PDA as it wrote out a line of data, the text blinking green, before moving onto another line of text, all at rapid speed. If she blinked, she would’ve missed tens of lines of text.
But then, as the data was streaming through her device, being automatically checked for inaccuracies, one line of text blinked red, and halted the entire process. She hummed to herself, and brought the PDA closer to her face. Most of it was a jumble of information, and she struggled to read it. It read:
wtr:>457gl = **siphoned**/<457gl = *permitted*::cd-19469M?query = FALSE
She tapped her screen to expand the error, and a dropdown box appeared, explaining that more than four hundred and fifty seven gallons of water had been siphoned from the great Eris Reservoir, which was more than was allotted and more than was reported. She frowned. This was supposed to be a routine mission; she had expected everything to validate, as it had before on other routine data server checks, and she would then move on with her day. Maybe she’d get a coffee on her way. But this was inexcusable. This was a fairly large error.
“Mister Horton,” she said, “We have an issue.”
The man walked up to her, and checked her PDA, reading the text for a moment. Then, he ran a hand through his hair and said, “Well, that’s not anything I know about. If we were using too much water, I’d have been notified.”
“Apparently not,” Yu said, frowning. “You’re using dozens more gallons than permitted per week.”
She could see from her periphery that Horton was starting to slightly sweat.
“I assure you, I have no knowledge about it,” he said, pulling out a small rag from his pocket and dabbing at his forehead with it. “The only one who could authorize that is Director Melody, anyway.”
“Then I will be speaking with the Director, I suppose,” Yu said, rubbing her eyes. This was more of a hassle than she was expecting, but nothing that couldn’t be resolved, she supposed. “Serena.”
“Yes?”
“Get me a link to Director Melody, please.”
“On it, ma’am.”
Then, she turned to Horton. “Is there anything else I should be aware of here?”
Horton shrugged, and she could see a flash of panic in his eyes. “Not that I know of, Miss.”
She glared at him for a moment, staring daggers into his soul, before easing her gaze and saying, “Good.”
“Director Melody isn’t answering,” Serena said after a moment.
Yu frowned. It was going to be a long day, she knew. A long day indeed.