Arc's Faith, Day 2.
23 Mar 2019Valcatta
Well, I have to admit, Arc’s Faith does have some good beer. The food, well… not so good. But the beer helped fill me up. I have to say that being this far out in the black there’s not that much ship traffic, so sleeping in the passenger cabin was not too bad. I met a young engineer last night named Willie, Funny kid… quiet. But when he did say something he seemed to know what he was talking about, I'm going to try out one of his improvements today I hope. He helped stabilize the output on my mining laser so I don't have to drift so close to an asteroid while I'm piercing it. I always have a fear that while I'm drilling another asteroid will move to close and squish me.
While he was working on my laser I asked him about the strange Communications I heard. I told him how the sounds that came through weren't your typical clicks of an asteroid field or the whistles and pops of a gas giant. But a low haunting sound, that by its very nature seemed unnatural.
“Yeah, I've heard about it,” he said. “Me and some of the other guys have talked about it, we only heard about it… oh, I would say about 4 or 5 days ago. There was a water hauler in here and the pilot kept going on about some strange ship that chased him halfway across that system. We figured he’d been drinking to much space juice, know what I mean?”
“Did he say what the ship looked like?”
“Nope, and we asked him that too, said he never saw it with his eyes but that he could feel it, I think the guys been in the black too long,” he said while moving his pointing finger around his ear in a looping motion. That did sound a bit crazy, even to me, then Willie continued. “He did describe the communications kinda the same way you're talking about them. He said there were low tones that would make your belly crawl.
“Yes!” I said with wide eyes. “It was a disturbing sound, that much is true.” The sound was very hard to describe, but the crazy water hauler did at least hear what I thought I had heard. Well, according to Willie anyway. “Did he say if he saw it on any scans or anything?”
“He said he couldn't get any scans but that rows of numbers were scrolling on his scanner monitors. I thought that was odd too,” Willie said. “Yeah, that guy was off his rocker. A scanner would show a blank screen if it couldn't get anything, but, rows of numbers? Yep, he’s looney.”
“That system has a few asteroid fields that I would like to look at, I'm still not ready to go back to Ham Hauling. Most of the passengers I get, well... they're ok enough, but I'm not in the mood for complaints.” I didn't tell him about my moms recent passing, its not anything that he would need to know after all.
“Well, this laser should do a good job for ya, plus it's got the Willie touch on it,” He wiggled his fingers in front of his face. “Magic,” he said with a tight grin and big brown eyes, then laughed and headed toward the door. “Val, you come back through soon you need to say hi and let me know how my laser did. Then he threw his hand rag in his pocket and headed out the door.
Val.