This Corner of the Universe (4 page)

Heskan
had a wild thought as the flag, and its responsibility, was pushed toward him. 
This is my last chance to run away down the halls screaming like a banshee
. 
Instead, he reached out, grasped the pole and then braced back to attention. 
“I assume command.” 
Too late now
.

The brief
ceremony over, Heskan said loudly, “As you were, folks.  Don’t let me stop what
you were doing.  I wasn’t planning any fancy speeches because we’ll be getting
to know each other soon enough.  We’re making way for Skathi shortly so let’s
make sure we’re ready.”

The
tunnel connecting Narvi and Skathi compressed the four light-year distance in
normal space to just nine and a half light-hours in t-space.  The trip equated
to slightly over four days of travel.  RT-17 was approaching the halfway point
of the trip when Heskan stepped into
Anelace’s
small gym.  At four and a
half meters long and fourteen meters wide, the room was little more than banks
of weight lifting devices and stationary machines that simulated running,
rowing and swimming.  As was becoming standard, most of the exercise machines
had holographic hemispheres at the front to give the illusion of exercising in
any number of environments.  On his former ship,
Archer
, he had set his
rowing environment to the primary orbital of his home planet with the intention
of “rowing” from it to Dione’s nearest moon.  Although he had diligently saved
his progress after each session, he had fallen far short of his goal despite
rowing faithfully for four years. 

This
time, Heskan stepped onto a Pedi-Sim, selected the machine’s generic
“Ocean-side Path” option from the choices and began a slow jog to warm up his
muscles.  The Form-U-Foam padding on the treadmill he ran on softened
considerably to simulate sand and it was not long before his calves began to
ache.  Heskan actually detested running and had unequivocally once stated “the
best thing about running is stopping.”  However, he had to set the example in
staying fit and the specter of the Brevic yearly fitness test always lurked in
the back of his mind.  He was not in any danger of failing it but just the
thought of failing along with the accompanying humiliation was enough to ensure
an adequate physical fitness regimen.  The chronometer indicated only eight minutes
had passed and he was already considering switching to a firmer surface when
Mike Riedel stepped near the Pedi-Sim next to him. 

“This
station taken, Captain?” the first officer asked.  Heskan waved toward the
machine.  “Go ahead, this way you won’t have far to run when I collapse and
need resuscitation.” 

Riedel
finished stretching and moved onto the machine.  Heskan felt his stomach
tighten. 
Oh, I hope this isn’t going to be awkward; I’ve never been good at
social situations but I really need to say something.  It’s going to be awful
if we just run next to each other in an uncomfortable silence. 

Heskan
noticed Riedel had selected a series of sixty-meter hurdle races.  From the
corner of his eye, he watched him run the first race, jumping over the
holographic hurdles.  The finish was close but the display said he came in
second place.

“Are
you a track man, Mike?” Heskan asked at the end of the race.

“I
used to run in college some.  Ana’s last skipper ran too and occasionally we’d
race each other.”  Riedel shrugged as he finished walking his cool down
sequence and prepared for the next race.

Heskan’s
legs were fully burning now.  He jogged slightly closer to the “water” and was
rewarded with the Form-U-Foam hardening some.  “How was Captain Hasting’s
relationship with Lieutenant Durmont?”

Riedel
paused his machine and Heskan followed suit.  Heskan could tell by Riedel’s
expression that he was thinking his answer over carefully. 

“Well,
I think they had some disagreements but both men wanted what was best for the
system,” Riedel stated tactfully.

It’s
not proper to speak poorly about your superior officers, especially your
commanding officer, but if I’m not honest with Mike right now, we’ll never
develop a real and trusting relationship,
Heskan thought. 
I might as well just be
brutally honest since that’s what I’ll expect from him. 
“I understand that
he’s my commander by virtue of his position and we’re certainly going to follow
any orders from our superiors but I think Durmont is an ass, personally.”

Riedel’s
guarded expression immediately melted into a big smile.  “I’m so glad to hear
you say that, Captain!  Captain Hasting hated him and judging by the few
meetings I’ve had with the man, I always thought he was a jerk as well.”  Riedel
quickly looked around the gym to ensure it was still empty.  “Durmont actually
told me that I should come to him directly if I thought Hasting was ever
acting” —he made air quotes with his fingers—“contrary to Narvi’s proper
authority.”  He shook his head in disgust.

Heskan
smiled.  “Hopefully if I‘m doing that, you’ll just give me a swift kick in the
butt first.”

Riedel
laughed and nodded, “We’re gonna get along great, Captain.”

“I
think so too, Mike.  I knew if I had a good first officer, everything else
would be easy.  I’m lucky to have you.”

Both men resumed their exercise
programs and the gym filled with the hum of the two machines and the friendly
banter of their operators.

*  *  *

Two
days later, Renard Tug 17 dove from the tunnel point into the dim red light of
Skathi’s M5V star.  Less than half the mass of Terra’s sun with half the heat,
Skathi’s star was typical bordering on pedestrian.  The solar system consisted
of only three terrestrial planets.  Closest to the red dwarf star, Skathi-1 was
a molten mass of heavy metals orbiting the star every seventy-one Terran days. 
Skathi-2 and -3 were further distant but equally barren.  None had a breathable
atmosphere so they would forever be known to humanity by only the sequential
order in which they appeared from their star.

What
made Skathi noteworthy was not her planets but what resided between them.  Unimaginatively
designated by Brevic stellar exploration as the “Alpha Field,” a dense asteroid
field rich in promethium was the system’s main attraction.  Notable for being
the only exclusively radioactive element besides technetium that is followed by
chemical elements with stable isotopes, promethium was a critical industrial
chemical element.  The Alpha Field, located between Skathi-1 and Skathi-2,
appeared to be a veritable garden for this rare material.  It was intensely
dense, making standard ore scanning procedures useless and starship sensor
capability heavily reduced due to interference.  The second major asteroid
field, the Beta Field, was positioned 15
lm
(light-minutes) past Skathi-3. 
It too contained enough trace deposits of promethium to create substantial sensor
disturbances but nothing comparable to those experienced in and around the
Alpha Field.

Four
years ago, after a Brevic scouting squadron surveyed the system, the Republic’s
major mining companies fought tooth and nail for the system’s initial mineral
rights.  After two years of litigation, Renard Mining Enterprises had prevailed
and rushed to begin its mining protocols.  Three Renard ore surveyor ships
began their sweeps but the Alpha Field proved to have too much sensor
disturbance for anything but time-consuming, close range analysis.  Two of the
three ships moved further out-system to begin categorizing the Beta Field while
the third conducted a limited site survey of the Alpha Field.

Any
operation in space is dangerous.  Space is not an environment friendly to
Terran life and despite spending centuries in it, man has discovered that space
has abundant ways to demonstrate just how unfriendly it is.  After one month of
surveying the Alpha Field, contact with the first Renard surveyor ship was
lost.  The remaining two ships organized a crude search but found no trace of
the lost surveyor.

Having
gotten off to a bad start, the second Renard ore survey mission was created to
right the wrongs of the first.  Renard had accepted that in its rush to begin
exploiting the rich mineral deposits, it had overlooked the inherent dangers of
surveying in a high radiation, low sensor visibility environment.  The vast
sums of monies paid to the families of the doomed first ship’s crew had helped
reinforce the point to the company.  This time, Renard sent three standard
surveyor ships for the Beta Field and the flagship of their priceless Domeyko
class ships to chart the Alpha Field.

In
the first week,
Domeyko
had surveyed approximately three percent of the
asteroid field and already had categorized enough promethium extraction sites to
place the asteroid belt on track to be the largest single known source of promethium
once fully surveyed.  Roughly three weeks into the job,
Domeyko
transmitted that it had found what it believed was the hull of Renard’s lost
surveyor ship.  This discovery was
Domeyko’s
last transmission and the
beginning of the rumors that Skathi was a cursed system.

Renard,
having sunk billions of Brevic credits into the system, could hardly walk away
from the project.  Besides, the company argued to the Republic’s Mining Safety
Panel, once online the system had the potential to place the Republic into the
enviable position of being the universe’s largest exporter of promethium. 
Having none of that, the panel suspended all mining activity within the system.

It
took another year for Renard’s lawyers to make the right arguments and push the
right buttons to have Skathi reopened for economic development.  Even before
the system officially reopened, Renard sent in surveyor ships in preparation for
the authority to reestablish mining operations.  Understanding that they had no
margin for error, Renard towed in an orbital prospector outpost.  The orbital was
Skathi-3’s first satellite and was positioned in technically a graveyard orbit,
an orbit a few hundred kilometers above standard geosynchronous that satellites
were typically moved into at the end of their lifespan. 

In
times past, such a mining station would have been placed much closer to the
mining area.  However, costly experience had taught space-faring miners that
placing their “home base” close to an easily navigable point in space made
sense.  In addition, if a larger refining station was brought in, it could use
the gravity well of the uninhabited planet to safely dispose of the unwanted
materials produced while preprocessing the ore for longer transport.

In
support of the station, one surveyor ship and dozens of ore extractors began
work in the Beta Field.  It was agreed that the Alpha Field could wait.  Almost
immediately, more trouble arose.  A mining extractor decompressed while working
on a large Beta Field asteroid.  The crew survived but the ore extractor was
removed from operation.  Since the initial trouble, another extractor suffered
extreme equipment failure due to large radiation saturation, and a third
extractor went missing along with both of its crewmembers.  Such attrition was
not entirely uncommon in deep space mining operations.  Extractors were
relatively tiny ships that performed extremely dangerous tasks.  The work
continued despite the mishaps.

Over
several months, the Beta Field grudgingly yielded its riches and ore transport
freighters began to dive into the system to haul the promethium to industrial
systems deeper within the Republic.  With the addition of freighters, a
navigation buoy was placed at the Narvi tunnel point inside the Skathi system. 
This beacon, replacing the inoperative four-year-old fleet survey buoy, not
only assisted with navigation but also acted as a signal repeater to enhance
communications in the radiation-saturated system.

As
the output of ore from the Beta Field grew, the need to replace the orbital
grew with it.  A prospector outpost was too small to handle the quantities of incoming
and outgoing ore.  Thus, it was necessary for Renard to tow one of their four
existing mining stations to Skathi.  The Refining And Loading Facilities,
called RALFs for short, were larger facilities better equipped to process
mineral extractions from frontier mining systems.  It took several months of
coordination but eventually RT-17 inserted a RALF and loaded up the prospector station. 
It was during the loading phase of the prospector station that Skathi lost its
first ore freighter.

The ore freighter was a HandySize
general-purpose freighter named
Joanne J. Bellows
, after the daughter of
the original owner.  Bought and sold several times since her launch, she was an
independent freighter operated by Captain Louis Kendry. 
Bellows
was
heading to the Narvi tunnel point, navigating its way through the Beta Field,
when she suffered major decompression and was lost with all hands.  A search
for lifeboats by the Renard surveyor ship and all of its excavators revealed
nothing but the freighter’s ELTI.  As word about the disaster spread, private
freighter captains raised their prices to transport ore from the Skathi system
and with Renard’s own ore freighter fleet heavily committed throughout the
known galaxy, it had little choice but to pay.  Where the loss of life had
failed to spur an investigation into the myriad of Skathi mining accidents, the
loss of revenue triumphed.  Renard Mining Enterprises CEO Baltimore H. Renard III
pressured the Brevic Republic’s governing counsel for assistance.  As political
pressure points were applied, the Brevic navy was soon given its sailing orders
to divert some of its already over-extended resources into the Skathi system.

*  *  *

The physical
manifestation of those orders dove out of the tunnel point, firmly secured to
the bed of RT-17.  After the wave of nausea passed, Heskan ordered a routine
systems check along with a full sensor sweep.  No ship had ever dove out of a
tunnel point into the wrong system but that didn’t prevent ship captains and
navigators across the universe from verifying their destination.  Once
satisfied
Anelace
was operating at full capacity and that they had confirmed
transit to the Skathi system, Heskan ordered Ensign Truesworth to sensor ping
the navigation beacon by the Narvi tunnel point.