Pain in the Arse(nic)
10 Jan 2018TheDarkLord
Chana 4D. Faulcon deLacey Python “TDL Hyperion”.November 3302.
I was back in Chana. Well, to be fair, I didn’t have to go there, but it was nearby and it had arsenic, which I needed to prospect from planetary surfaces. Chana was where Claudia lived.
Things had been awkward for us since The 9th Legion had been implicated in Chana Jet Life Inc losing its status as controlling faction of the system. A significant uptick in influence within Chana for the Hyrmonada Imperial Society had resulted in a brief civil war, and patronage had taken control of the system, flipping the government type, and reducing nearby fortification triggers. When she’d asked me a direct question over the comms link, I’d been unable to deny that we’d been involved. The scores of warships jumping from, and back out to, Malaikudi, had told their own story though. She knew.
The Python’s vertical thrusters flared and then idled, settling the ship on the floor of a wide valley that ran for at least a hundred clicks in each direction. I placed the ship in lockdown, then entered the Scarab SRV. A rudimentary surface reconnaissance vehicle, the Scarab was like an oversized version of the Mars landers from early in the 21st century.
Until this point, my SRV experience had been limited to a short play. A couple of hundred metres each way, then back to the ship for some real work. But the time had come: the real work was to be done in the SRV.
In order to build the “grade 5” modifications to my Frame Shift Drive, Felicity Farseer needed arsenic. One unit per modification attempt. Clipper, Cutter, Corvette, Anaconda, Python, Asp, Fer de Lance. 7 ships, a minimum of three attempts per ship. Two units currently in storage. So, the shopping list had 19 units of arsenic on it. Best ways to get arsenic were, in order, surface prospecting, mission rewards, and mining.
I had always been the sort to try out a new method to complete a task, for no reason other than it was something different. Plus, given the amount of mining I had done, I didn’t rate my chances finding arsenic on demand, since to date I only had two units.
The SRV deployed its wheels from the stowed formation, before the hangar lift placed it on the ground below the cooling Python.
“Warning, low gravity,” advised the Scarab’s onboard computer. I checked the display. 0.05g. “Wow, this moon must be made of balsa wood.” I thought to myself.
I inched forward, out of the Python’s shadow, and commenced my first proper SRV assignment. Before heading here, I’d done some research, so I had ideas regarding my strategy, and how to use the wave scanner. There were some controls that I would need to figure out as I went along, but that seemed to be another modus operandi for me.
Maybe because of the ice, maybe because of the low gravity, almost certainly because of the newness of the driver, the SRV cut an erratic path away from the Python. But it looked as if there were lots of rocks to prospect here. I felt optimistic.
I followed the teachings that I’d received prior to setting out on this voyage. I was starting to get the hang of using the wave scanner to find rocks, then shooting them, then picking up the fragments with my cargo scoop. But I was yet to find any arsenic. I carried on driving. Thirty minutes, forty five, an hour.
I was heading uphill, out of the valley. Something caused me to turn around. On this airless body, the only things I could hear were the noises that my Scarab was making. Unlike in ships, which had powerful computers and audio systems to simulate the noises of outside, in a Scarab, if it wasn’t transmitted through the physical structure of the vehicle, you wouldn’t hear it. Accordingly, there was silence as, three kilometres away, Hyperion dismissed itself. The thrusters threw a huge cloud up off the surface, from which the ship emerged before angling into a 75 degree climb. Two kilometres off the surface, autopilot engaged the Frame Shift Drive, and the Python winked out into supercruise.
Although I was in a temperature controlled environment, full of the noises of my own systems, I suddenly felt very cold and very alone in this silent and deserted place.
The barren icy moon had a uniform sulphurous yellow tinge. Above hung Chana 4, the ringed gas giant. All around me, stars near and far hung in what we would call sky if there were an atmosphere. These sensations were very odd. I’d been on planets before, but had just flown into bases, and then straight out again. I had had almost no appreciation for it. Even when I’d taken the Clipper White Star for a run through the canyons near Farseer’s base, I hadn’t got it
But here, on a plain of pockmarked yellowed ice, in the bubble cockpit of an SRV, I felt space.
“Fuel level at fifty percent.”
The status report dragged me out of my reverie. I slammed the throttles forward on the SRV and went off in search of mineral outcrops and meteorites. For hours more, I searched. When fuel became dangerously low, I synthesised more.
But no arsenic.
After several hours, my body clock told me that it was late. My search had turned up some useful rare materials, so I decided to stay down here on the surface. I recalled Hyperion, which landed half a kilometre away. There wasn’t much in the way of fresh food on board, but there was a warm bed, surrounded by duralium and shields. And there were some ration packs and some beers. As the planetary vehicle winch pulled me up, I was looking forward to the beers.
I grabbed a beer and my datapad, shook off my flight suit, and sat on a sofa in the crew lounge. A complete waste of space for this ship that only ever had one person in it, but it was comfy.
Six hours later, I woke. All the lights were on. The beer was three quarters full, sitting on the same table upon which my feet rested. All was still quiet.
I picked up the undrunk beer, and carried it through to the galley. I made some coffee and checked the various galactic happenings. A friend on the 9th Legion message board suggested his ‘go-to’ location for arsenic. A High Metal Content planet in HR 1597. I carried my mug through to Hyperion’s bridge, and checked the Galaxy Map. It was only a few jumps away. Universal Cartographics confirmed that the arsenic concentration would be much higher. That seemed like the right decision. I powered up Hyperion’s drives, and made my way to the new location. Claudia had not sensed my proximity and messaged me. I sighed as the Witchspace tunnel enveloped my Python.
Entering orbital cruise around HR 1597 A 1, I homed in on a collection of impact craters. My first ever planetary landing at more than one g went fine, and I immediately deployed the Scarab.
“Warning, high gravity,” advised the Scarab’s onboard computer. I wondered whether there was a space in between low grav and high grav warnings. True enough though, the SRV handled so much better on the high g world than it had on Chana 4A.
I settled in for a big session of SRV driving. After the novelty of my first drives, and the time spent on Chana’s ice, I felt quite at home, and ready to get the job done.
It took four hours.
As Hyperion’s main engines pushed me out of the gravity well, I felt quite pleased with myself. It had taken more perseverance than I had anticipated, but it seemed that I could grab materials from planets. A new string to my bow.