by M. D. Cooper
Mira didn’t respond, especially given that she wouldn’t be able to help informing the ensign that the corporate ships could fly by, drop missiles, and keep on going. With the Inquiry all but stationary, they’d make for an easy target.
Another thing to remind her of when we have a moment.
No one spoke for the next few minutes, until Emma’s announcement that they were now in a stable orbit broke the silence.
The AI sent an affirmative response, and a few seconds later, the main display registered the shuttle’s departure.
Given Aqua’s estimates, it would take them half a day to get what they needed from the resupply station, and a day, two max, to make the final repairs necessary to get them on their way again.
From that point, it would be three days burn to the edge of the system, then a fifteen-day journey back to Bysmark. And then….
Stars know what is going to shake out of all this.
Mira busied herself with what reports remained undone, but after days of travel in the dark layer and the time it took to decel into Khorina’s inner system, there was little left to do.
To fill the time, she began running active scan sweeps on space around Kyra, looking for anything interesting, though after only thirty minutes, all she had to show for her efforts was new rocks to add to the nav charts.
Wait a second.
A return on the last sweep caught her attention. One of the rocks had shifted its orbit in a way that rocks were not wont to do—especially considering it had used thrusters to do it.
She tracked the prior trajectory of the space debris and confirmed that it was on a new orbit that would have required energy expenditure to achieve.
A little spy satellite?
Mira was more amused than surprised. It tracked that a company mining the planet would want to ensure that their investment was secure—or, at the least, that any thieves could be identified.
“Check this out, you two,” the commander said, putting the rock’s visual on the main display. “A sneaky little bastard. It’s keeping an eye on us and the team.”
“Well, look at that,” Emma said with a laugh. “I guess they’ll have some interesting data to review when the next freighter comes through.”
“I wonder if it saw that asteroid come down,” Brock said in a half-focused tone.
“Pardon?” Mira checked the report on objects striking Kyra, and saw nothing in the last few days. “What asteroid?”
Brock swapped the main display to a view of the mining site, then panned several kilometers to the west. “This here. Given the state of the impact spray, it’s recent, in just the past few weeks, but it struck me as suspicious that something would have come down so close to the mining site.”
“Suspicious? How?” Emma asked. “Sounds like you’re borrowing trouble.”
He glanced at Mira and shrugged. “Just trying to be thorough.”
“Do you think Bozas came through here?” the commander asked.
Brock nodded. “Yeah, or someone else. We are supposed to be keeping our eyes peeled for pirates.”
“OK.” Mira straightened in her seat. “If anyone nefarious was behind that impact crater, we can assume they didn’t also spot our little friend out there. Let’s tap into it and see what we can see.”
Emma nodded. “You got it, but…how do we do that?”
“Didn’t the academy teach you basic breaching techniques?” Mira asked. “Stars, what do they teach kids these days?”
Despite her bravado, it took Mira nearly an hour—with a little help from Janice—to slip past the observation satellite’s defenses and get into its records store. In the name of expediency, they pulled all of its records for the past month, and ran a filter on them for any anomalous events.
The first item of note was the most recent visit from a X-Cor freighter.
“Efficient work,” Brock commented as they watched the cargo pods reach space and find themselves attached to the ship in very little time. “Though I suppose they’ve done that a lot of times.”
“They likely have,” Mira replied. “Also, the little spy took a good look at the mining site a few times, and there’s no sign of the crater.”
They sped through the next few flagged items until they finally saw the meteor’s entry.
“That is a bit curious,” Mira said. “It’s big enough to reach the ground, but there’s no rock on the charts big enough to do that anywhere near to Kyra right now.”
Emma shrugged. “This isn’t a well-surveyed system. I’ve spotted dozens of asteroids not on the charts.”
“Sure,” the commander replied. “But for nothing to see this? Just seems really unlikely.”
“Yeah?” Brock asked. “This is even more suspicious.”
The forward display showed the meteor breaking apart, the larger segment hitting the ground at the impact site while another drifted toward the mining site. It was only visible via residual heat from reentry, but before long, it disappeared from view entirely.
“OK…that was no asteroid,” Mira said. “Someone is snooping down there.”
“But why?” Emma asked. “It’s just a regular old mining site. Sure, they’re taking out some rather interesting exotics, but nothing worthy of corporate espionage.”
Mira rose and walked to the forward display, scowling at the best image the spy satellite had captured of…whatever had separated from the main descender. “Someone must think so…getting a bot down there is no simple endeavor.”
“Not that hard, though,” Emma said.
“Fair,” Mira replied. “But still, you don’t do it just to see how much titanium someone is pulling out of the ground.”
Brock shrugged. “So what are we going to do about it?”
Mira gave him a pointed look, and her cousin paled. “Er…what are we going to do about it, ma’am?”
“Check it out.” The commander squared her shoulders. “When Janice gets back with the shuttle, I’m going down.”
Emma’s eyes widened. “Really, Commander? Is that wise?”
“Why not?” Mira asked with a shrug. “I’ll take Lorra with me. In her mech suit, she’s a match for pretty much anything we might encounter down there—which is likely to be nothing.”
“Unless that bot is still down there,” Brock said. “Ready to pew-pew you.”
“Thanks for your concern.” Mira placed a hand on her chest. “I’m touched, but I’ll be armed and armored as well.”
Emma pursed her lips and sighed. “I guess it’s not really up to us, is it?”
Mira snapped her fingers and winked. “Now you got it.”
Two hours later, Janice docked the shuttle in the corvette’s aft bay and set to unloading it with Greg and Aqua.
The AI’s laugh sounded like a spray of water hitting plas on a hot summer day.
Janice groaned.
It was Mira’s turn to laugh.
Mira passed the conn to the ship’s pilot and left the bridge. The armory was on the main deck, on the opposite side of the ship from the aft bay. When she arrived, Lorra was already there, her mech suit now adorned in its ablative plating. In place of a helmet, a holographic visual of her head hovered over the amor, and it turned toward Mira as she entered the room.
“What sort of loadout are you thinking?” the dolphin asked, a smirk stretching its avatar’s long mouth as she turned her railgun over, checking the weapon’s status.
“Going with medium armor,” Mira replied as she pulled off her tunic and folded it neatly before stepping back into the armorer.
Like everyone in the service, she always wore her skintight shipsuit beneath any other uniform. The shipsuit was capable of shedding light weapons fire, and provided protection against decompression with its built in flow-plas hood and gloves.
The armoring machine checked her baselayer over for required functionality and connectivity before wrapping her in layers of carbon-fiber-laced plas and gold-titanium armor. It only took two minutes, but when the armorer was done, Mira weighed two hundred kilos more, and could withstand anything short of a proton beam—at least for a little while.
While her protective shell had been applied, Lorra had laid out a selection weapons. Two sidearms, an array of multifunction rifles, and a lightwand all rested on the table next to her tunic.
“Pick your poison,” the dolphin said with a sweep of her mech suit’s arm.
“Well, lightwand is easy.” Mira swept it up first, slotting it into her right thigh as she looked over the rifles. “My father would have my hide if I went downworld without that.”
“I can only imagine,” Lorra replied. “For the rifles, I really like the CC-897. It has the one-gram rail pellets, plus the variable-power electron beam.”
“Not to mention the hammer-fist pulse mode,” Mira added as she picked the weapon up. “No kinetic mode, though.”
The technical sergeant nodded. “Yeah, that kinda annoys me as well, but that’s what the sidearms are for. One pulse and one projectile. Tell baddies to smarten up with the pea shooters, and if they don’t listen, then boom! Out comes the rail.”
Mira couldn’t help but laugh at the doe. “You really love your guns.”
“I love guns, and I love using them,” Lorra said with a grin. “So, do you want that, or the A4-97 with the pulse, kinetic, and rail?”
The human looked at the other rifle, then shook her head. “No, if we’re going up against a stealthed bot, an e-beam will be more than handy.”
“CC-897 it is,” Lorra said, handing the weapon to Mira. “Shall we, then, Commander?”
Mira grabbed her helmet off the rack and nodded. “Let’s do this.”
They crossed the ship in short order, reaching the bay just as the others were unloading the last of the gear, adding it to the stacks along the aft bulkhead.
“Running off on me, are you?” Aqua asked in a tone that left Mira unsure if the chief was joking or not.
Lorra’s mech frame shrugged. “Commander’s orders. Everything you asked for is done. Should just be a matter of slotting in the new emitters.”
“Once I calibrate them,” Aqua replied. “Don’t worry, though, Greg’s ready to get the job done.”
Her tone definitely carried a note of accusation this time, and the man in question winced, but otherwise kept his mouth shut.
“Lorra has the highest combat rating aboard, barring Janice,” Mira said. “The XO and I can’t both go down. Don’t worry, we won’t be long.”
The chief made a face, but nodded before turning to Greg. “Alright, let’s get our EV gear off and then get to work.”
Janice emerged from the shuttle a moment later, wearing a carefully schooled expression. “Bird’s all yours, Commander.”
“Thanks, Lieutenant,” Mira said as she approached. “Hold down the fort and ping me if anything happens.”
The AI nodded as she stepped aside. “You got it. See you in a few hours.”
Mira entered first, turning left and ducking into the cockpit while Lorra sealed the hatch and did a quick inspection.
“Stars…they do not make these things with my people in mind,” she muttered. “And to be honest, I’m small. My brothers would die in here.”
“That’s what we get for having this sleek corvette,” Mira replied. “A tiny shuttle.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” the doe said as she eased into the cockpit and folded the copilot’s chair away before anchoring her armor to the deck. “I mean…the pool in the rec room is bigger than this thing. I think someone was just skimping.”
The commander nodded as she ran through the preflight. “Yeah, I could see that happening. Oh, look at that, Janice topped off the fuel, wasn’t that considerate?”
Lorra snorted. “Well, the service bots do it. Not really that exceptional.”
“Sure, but she had to have gotten them right on it.”
The dolphin let out one of her kind’s chittering laughs. “We good to go, then? I’m already feeling claustrophobic.”
“Really?” Mira glanced at her companion as the shuttle settled onto the launch rails. “But you’re always in your mech suit, how is this different?”
“My outer senses map to the suit,” Lorra explained. “It feels like my skin most of the time—honestly, I’ve spent so much of the last few years in it, getting out to stretch my fins feels odd. Either way, with the plating on the suit and then this tiny shuttle…yeah, it feels like I’m trapped. Not bad, though, just mildly disconcerting.”
Mira shook her head, a smile tugging at her lips. “Alright then, so long as you’re not going to rip the hatch off halfway down and jump out or something.”
“No chance.” Lorra’s chittering laugh came again. “Promise.”
The shuttle slid out of the bay, and Mira re-checked their atmospheric entry vector before initializing the first burn. The retros fired, slowing their orbital velocity and dropping the shuttle’s altitude until they were on a fifteen-degree angle of approach.
“Twenty minutes,” she said to the warrant officer. “Should be a pretty smooth ride, Kyra has a relatively calm atmosphere.”
“Could really use some more water,” the dolphin replied with a shrug.
Mira gestured at the equatorial ocean. “What about that?”
Lorra gave a derisive chirp. “I guess it’s teeeechnically water. But you wouldn’t catch me swimming in that sludge.”
The commander shook her head. “There’s just no pleasing you.”
“Sure there is. Just get me back to Jal Enna, and I’ll dive into the Sphria Ocean before you can say, ‘Damn that’s cold’.”
Mira laughed again, glancing at the doe. “Stars, you’re a lot funnier than I thought you’d be. Going to make this much more enjoyable.”
“I try to play it straight at first,” she replied. “But I can’t hold back for too long—though, being around Aqua helps.”
“Oh?” Mira cocked an eyebrow, wondering if she was about to get her first crew complaint.
Lorra gave an exaggerated groan. “She’s just not…happy—and anytime something threatens to make her happy, she quashes it so fast, you wonder if you were seeing things.” The dolphin paused and hunched a little. “Sorry, that was completely inappropriate.”
Mira gave her shoulders a slight heave as she readied the shuttle for its next burn. “Sometimes you have to say what’s on your mind. It’s alright. I might have a conversation with her at some point—though who knows if we’ll all be together after this mission. The debrief alone could take weeks.”
“That’s a little depressing,” Lorra replied. “I’ve really enjoyed s
erving under you…and despite its ongoing issues with the grav emitters, this ship is a dream.”
“Thank you,” Mira said while activating the burn. “That means a lot. I feel the same way, about you and the ship. To be honest, it’s really peculiar that we’re having these issues. Sure, this is a new model, and we’re running the Inquiry through its first interstellar voyage, but grav emitters aren’t new tech. This shouldn’t be happening.”
“You’re not wrong.” The dolphin’s head bobbed in agreement. “On any front. Hopefully, swapping out the faulty units will help—granted, they might cause more problems, given that they’re made for commercial freighters.”
“Aqua seemed to believe that it wouldn’t be an issue,” Mira replied. “Do you think they might not work?”
“Well…they should work. Graviton emission is really just about volume and energy, just like any other particle. If they can push out what we need, then they’ll do the trick—but you know how it is…one’s demise is in the details.”
Mira snorted. “Yeah, that’s the way of it. Thirty seconds to atmo. You locked down?”
“Better than your seat is, ma’am,” the dolphin replied.
A chuckle slipped past Mira’s lips as she double-checked her own harness. “Well, let’s hope that means ‘good’ for both.”
The shuttle began to shudder gently as they hit atmosphere, most of the shock and vibrations dissipated by the a-grav systems. After a few more minutes, and several retro burns, they slowed to a sedate five hundred kilometers per hour, drifting over the central ocean for a bit before finally reaching land.
“Six minutes to the mining site,” Mira announced. “Though I guess you can see the lances as well as I.”
“Yeah…and wow. Those things must be boring deep.”
Mira nodded in agreement.
The mining lances rose kilometers above the planet’s surface, clouds of dust pouring out from the holes they were drilling in the world below.
“I’m always amazed by the size of mining equipment,” the dolphin said. “I’ve seen deep sea rigs that are larger than the Normandy.”
“And they fly in and out of a gravity well, too,” Mira added. “That takes some serious engineering.”
The shuttle slowed enough that its general shape no longer offered a significant aerofoil effect, and Mira switched to the grav drives, slowing them further as she brought the craft around the mining lances.