Rocks Of Gold
19 Jun 2021Lord Scarfinger
Rover "Ashiba" Ziine, in Arduan Ashiba means the dark one. (Ashi=dark/black, ba=one) the only Mercian on board of this Argosy, on his way back from the ship's refineryHears his Taari half sister Mleen and half brothers Saardon and Latruuk banter in Arduan on the bridge. "Mleen, ta niib vei llen ta afnu cla maas atch koo Tlifeer? Ta suum sla Xetuum poh ol yuop vyyer sla tli. Ve mirc ta afnu vei e Tlin plat koo ta pe guua." (Mleen, don't you think you've spent too much time with father? You look like mother but are foul-mouthed like him. No wonder you haven't had a man stay with you for long.)
Mleen shot back at the two men:"Ji mwal ya niib veii sraa kii ya tnu yti kre trakooii pa areta cu ta, vesla ta dozwa!" (At least I didn't cry when I got my ass whooped by either of them, unlike you two!)
You could hear their laughs hollering through the corridor that leads to the bridge.
Rover couldn't help but to shake his head and crack a smile himself.
Back on the bridge he told them that there was a fragment stuck in the processing part of the old, overused and abused ship refinery. And the next time that shit happens, which could happen anytime again, he won't crawl in there alone. Easier if the one who crawled vertically inside, keeps the latch pried open, while the other one from the outside fumbles for the fragment, to flip it so it can fall through. In case he can reach it. Why do these maintenance slots have to be cramped in hard to reach from the outside spots anyways? he wondered.
Skord Nbula, the 5th and only udaakian member of the crew nodded in acknowledgement from his mining laser panel on the left side next to the pilot. Latruuk, on the pilot's seat, brought the ship's nose up again facing the asteroid and Skord said: "Captain, limpets set to collect again and lasers firing," he paused for a short time and then yelled: "now!"
Everyone starred startled at him for a few seconds and then shrugged it off.
Rover, his given name by his deceased biological parents, was an orphan and adopted at the age of 2 by a Taari family. He is their 3rd child, they got Latruuk their youngest, when Rover was 4. Unlike the rest of his family, which all were pale and white haired, his black skin and black hair was very unique. But everyone accepted him like he was their own blood, he was taught the same Taari traditions as everyone else, and he never felt being anything else than a Taari. His father often called him the Nubian Prince of the family, a referrence to old earth history. His father loved to read and study histroical records of the Mercians' origins.
The Ziine family lived on the Mercian continent for generations, even through the wars being on the side of Mercia.
They work for Braaben Ore Mining, a small mining company, which got contracted besides the Arduan Mining Corporation by the Arduan government to gather metals for the Arks.
Braaben Ore Mining was founded some 36 years ago by Daeveed Braaben, a Voltec, with a lesser urge to become a warrior than other Voltecs. He started with a single small ship to mine the rings around Ardua as a freelancer. But managed to grow his company and get a small settlement on Inde to mine on that moon within 10 years. And could expand to a small fleet of Argosies after 20. And thanks to the mercian company Frontier, making their Flight Development Simulator commercially available, instead just for military use a few years ago, training new pilots to navigate through the rings became much easier, and much cheaper, since there were no crashes, repairs or even week long groundings of vessels needed anymore. An expensive investment, but completely worth it though.
They were mining gold for circuit boards needed on the Arks.
The Argosy class is a small freight/mining ship, with a crew of five and a 60t cargo capacity. Though another relic from the past, these oval shaped ships with wings on their longer sides were reliable space crafts. Some were overhauled versions and others still had the original systems in them, so as the Atrio, their vessel. Argossies were used for both, core and laser resource extraction, but the Atrio was equipped for laser mining only.
As they went along with mining through the rings and moved from asteroid to asteroid, they flew through a few dust plumes from previous core miners. These plumes are small particles from when the seismic charges crack the core roids into pieces.
While the lasers cut fragments out of the rocks, collector limpets went back and forth, slowly filling up the refinery.
Prospectors worked fine as well, which isn't always the case either. Everything went smoothly again as it should have from the beginning.
Little did they know that one of these plumes was actually a Thargon Swarm, fired from a Thargoid vessel hiding behind one of the large asteroids. And since the scanner array of the Atrio still was the original system from when it was built, it didn't detect anything behind the rock. Nor the swarm, a group of small dronelike entities, which are hive mind controlled by its mothership. These Thargon Swarms are used to either attack or defend. This version though, was kind of a bit special. Instead of firing shield and hull piercing miniature projectiles, it was used to fire blobs of thick black liquid towards the mined asteriod. It had to stay stuck on the fragments chipped off by the mining laser and then picked up by the collector limpet, to bring it into the ship.
The voice of the ships AI sounded off on the bridge:"Limpet drone error, refinery full!"
"Fuck, not again!" Rover yelled. "Well, off to the refinery again. You wanna come along, Skord?" he added.
The Udaakian nodded and along they went.
Arrived at the refinery they saw at the screen, that once again, a rock fragment got stuck between the the top latches, and of course not on the ones to reach easily. Skord and Rover went about business, Skord crawled into the refinery to pry the latches open wider, while Rover tried to flip the fragment into the right direction, so it could tumble in. Not able to reach it with his hands, he grabbed a crowbar, set there already just for that only purpose, to have an extension and poke at the piece of rock.
Inside the refinery, a smudgy black substance suddenly dropped from the fragment down at Nbulas face. Before he actually could react or release a full gagging sound, the goo slid into him through his nostrils and mouth. He started to wildly shake for two seconds, while the substance fused with his neurological parts. Two seconds of horror and excruciating pain, then he heard something ring through his head like a whispered breath:"What are you? Uuu Uuudaaki, mine."
Rover could faintly hear something from Skord, as he felt the fragment turn and fall in. He asked:"Are you okay, buddy?
The goo, already having control about Nbula, deep enough in his brain and body functions, to know how and what to say and do, and yet command him for its own needs, let him reply:" Yeah, just some machine grease that dropped down from above. Hit me on the forehead. Don't worry, Ashiba."
Though Skord tried to reply different, he couldn't fight it. And the more he tried to fight it, the more it hurt. Until the Thargoid substance completely took him and his thoughts over.
Now a Thargoid which secreted the goo, has control over Skord's every move, and sees everything he sees. Hides somewhere on a Thargoid scout ship, in the Arduan rings.
No one noticed anything out of the ordinary on Skord, as he and Ashiba returned to the bridge.
"Limpet drone error corrected." Rover said in an badly imitated robot voice.
Both manned their positions again and the mining went on, until the cargo hold was filled with 60 tons of gold.
Then returned to unload their shipment on Inde, which then was unloaded on to a larger freighter that brought the shipments to Ardua, for further processing. On the shipment of the Atrio, more Thargoid goo, on its way to Ardua and the Arks...
D. Jehle 2/5/2021-6/19/2021