by M. D. Cooper
“There’s the crater,” Lorra said, leaning forward to point at the ground. “Based on the brief look that spy satellite got, I’d say that whatever left that made a bee-line for the refinery.”
“Agreed,” Mira replied, bringing the shuttle low to keep it over the path of the bot they’d witnessed. “I wonder if it tried to get inside.”
“What for, though?”
“Why any of this?” the commander asked. “It’s just an automated refinery. Those things are a dime a dozen.”
The warrant officer snorted. “Oh really? Can I pick some up at the next station commissary we stop at?”
“Absolutely. Grab some for me, too.”
They continued on a slow approach to the refinery, not seeing any sign of the bot—or anything else, for that matter—finally setting down on a landing pad next to the structure.
Lorra deployed a trio of surveillance drones from the shuttle, letting them do a detailed scan of the surrounding area before they checked one another’s seals and exited the craft.
“You know, a little more oxygen in the air here, and it wouldn’t be too bad to breathe,” Mira said. “Something must be growing in those oceans to bump it up this much.”
“Or it’s silica outgassing,” Lorra replied. “I have to admit, I’m shocked there’s no preterraforming going on here yet…not even an automated assessor.”
“I bet the interests behind this mine are keeping it that way right now. As soon as Kyra gets selected for active terraforming, their days of digging in the dirt are over.”
The holographic dolphin’s head adopted a scowl. “Bastards. I could see myself raising a family in oceans like Kyra’s—once they’re cleaned up, that is. Right now, they’d probably eat my hide off in a day.”
“Don’t want that,” the commander said with a laugh before she turned around, surveying the bleak landscape marred only by a mountain of rock a few kilometers away and the refinery and its slag piles. “Now that we’re down here, this feels a little silly.”
Lorra’s mech frame gave an exaggerated shrug. “Orbital scan didn’t spot anything, so coming down to take a peek made sense, ma’am.”
She nodded. “You’re right. Let’s do a sweep of the refinery perimeter. Maybe we’ll spot something obvious.”
They approached the structure, which stood over a hundred meters high and stretched for half a kilometer. On their right were stacks of refined ore, while on the far side lay the slag piles. Mira wanted to suggest they split up to save time, but she knew that wasn’t the smarty move. After a brief conversation, Lorra took the lead, focusing more on the surrounding landscape, while Mira studied the building.
“Network on this thing is very stubborn,” she said as they approached the main doors. “I’d have to run a brute-force breach to get through…and that might cause some problems.”
“Really?” Lorra asked. “The supply station wasn’t hard for Janice to get through. Should you ask her for help?”
Mira pursed her lips. She hadn’t wanted to appeal to the AI, but in the name of expediency, decided it was wise.
Mira smiled behind her helmet, glad to hear she wasn’t the only one who had faced difficulty accessing the refinery’s network.
She was almost tempted to say yes.
Mira signed off and turned back to the refinery. They’d passed the main entrance and were now walking across the gravelly stretch that ran to the far end of the facility. Not far away, there was a recessed door labeled ‘Service Entrance 9A’. On a lark, she walked toward it, noting a small amount of carbon scoring on the lower left corner of the sign.
There was more around the jamb, and she grabbed the door handle, giving it a sharp tug. She was shocked when it pulled open.
“Well, that’s a bit telling,” Lorra pointed at the severed locking mechanism. “Looks like we have some legitimately nefarious activity going on here.”
“That we do. I’m going to get Janice working on the network.” She gestured for the dolphin to enter first. “After you.”
Lorra nodded and entered the building, rifle held ready as she walked down a short passage to another door—this one also opening without trouble.
The sounds of the refinery’s operation were audible from outside, but once the second door opened, the cacophony slammed into Mira like a solid wall. Her armor attenuated it, focusing more on irregular noises, of which there were still many, but enough that she wasn’t overwhelmed by the volume.
Stars, being on a ship for weeks really makes you forget how loud shit can be.
Directly ahead of them, crushed ore moved down a conveyer. Much of it was a dull silver in color, and Mira edged toward it, watching as her armor’s spectroanalysis identified the elements.
Mira shrugged as she looked around at the machines breaking down the ore, then separating, purifying, and smelting it. The far end of the facility was likely filled with ingots being loaded into transport containers.
She moved toward the raw materials end of the refinery, where she ducked under the conveyer and moved further in. Lorra jumped over the belt and followed after, releasing several microdrones and sending their output to the pair’s shared net.
Mira suspected that the AI would let them know if she found anything out, but asked nonetheless.
She leapt over another conveyer, then dodged around a few automatons that were cleaning a spill of uranite off the ground.
Once she’d cleared them, the commander came around a sifting machine and saw Lorra standing over the wreckage of a security drone. It was—or at least, had once been—a meter-high cylinder with an array of weapons at its disposal.
Now it lay in two pieces, shell dented by kinetic impacts.
Mira’s laugh didn’t abate. a few planet-lances. Not a lot of smash-n-grab profit here.>
Lorra interrupted,
Eleven meters from the downed security drone lay a thing that appeared like a tangle of cables. She might have taken it for nothing more, except that they didn’t seem to match anything else in the refinery.
Half obscured in the center of the mass was a smooth sphere, but at least one of the cables connected to it. As she took in the sight, only one thought came to Mira’s mind: Alien.
Just as they arrived and stood over the mess, trying to make heads or tails of it, Janice reached out, sounding more than a little concerned.
Mira let out a string of curses.
It took effort for Mira to hold back a laugh.
Then again…it did destroy the refinery’s security bots. She shook off the thought.
The mech’s posture relaxed a hair.
Mira walked closer to the tangled mess, and nudged one of the cable-like tentacles with her foot.
Looking around, Mira spotted a metal rod that had been knocked free in the bot’s fight, and used it to touch the residue.
Lorra said.
Mira prised one of the bot’s tentacles—she felt an aversion to calling them that, but it seemed to fit—out of the metal. Its bottom was partially melted, and she found herself agreeing with the dolphin’s theory.
She’d only made it a dozen meters away, when a low scraping sound came from nearby.
Fearing another of the strange probes, the commander unslung her rifle and eased around a pile of uranium rods. Before she’d even reached the corner, a stream of kinetic rounds flew past her, and she fell back, her armor registering the hard radiation hitting her from the rods.
Cursing herself for not using drones, she released a pair from her armor, the microscopic machines rising above the stack of uranium to provide a view of another security drone. There was a hole in its lower section, and it stood propped up against a conveyer belt.
From the look of things, it was unable to move, so Mira doubled back, coming around the stack to take aim on the machine from where it couldn’t shoot back.
She switched her rifle to its rail mode and launched a string of pellets into the security drone. They traced a line up its cylindrical body, one penetrating near the top and sending a shower of sparks into the air.
OK…I think—
Kinetic rounds struck Mira’s side, and she spun to see another X-Cor security drone—this one undamaged—come into view around a smelting cauldron. She let fly with a barrage of return fire before diving around the far side of the pile of rods, praying that the damaged bot was fully out of commission.
the commander replied.
The dolphin sent back an affirmative response, then added,
Another barrage of rounds streaked past Mira, a few hitting the uranium rods. She released another stream of rail pellets, not as concerned about damaging the facility as the bot had to be, when a thought occurred to her.
The AI responded with an amused cough.
This time there was no mirth in Janice’s response.
Mira turned her focus back to the bot, which was moving around the far side of the equipment that blocked it to get a clear shot at her. She checked the combat net to see that the other two security drones were closing as well—one on her position, and the other on Lorra.
With that warning sent, Mira gave a moment’s thought to her own predicament and decided the best option was to destroy the drone as fast as possible with as much force as she could muster.
As silently as she could manage, she leapt atop the pile of uranium rods and switched her CC-897 to its electron beam mode. Watching through her probes, she timed her shot for the exact moment the security drone came around the machinery.
A straight, white bolt of lightning surrounded by a hazy blue glow of cherenkov radiation lanced from her weapon to the bot. The blast burned away a segment of the machine’s side, but it managed to get its own shot off, and a trio of heavy slugs slammed into Mira’s chest, throwing her back onto the pile of rods.
The shock of the impact knocked her rifle from her grasp, and the weapon clattered to the floor. She pulled herself up into a seated position, one hand reaching for a sidearm she knew would do nothing, when the security drone rose up in front of her.
Her right hand clenched, wrapping around one of the uranium rods, and without another thought, she lifted the ten-meter-long shaft and threw it like a javelin.
A ton of radioactive metal flew at the machine, hitting it like an artillery shell and tearing a hole right through the center of it. Sparks flew and flames licked at her feet as the drone’s a-grav system died, and it fell to the ground.
Mira had been tracking it via the overhead drones, and when the bot moved around a smelter to fire at her, she threw another uranium rod. This time, the shaft of fissile metal slammed into the smelter, breaking a chunk off the drum and showering debris on the bot.
Not wa
iting to see if it had taken serious damage, she leapt off the stack and snatched up her CC-897, gave it a once over, and moved out of cover to fire a stream of rail pellets at the bot.
Only, it wasn’t there.
Shit…where did you go?
None of the drones had eyes on it, and Mira wondered if it had been knocked down by her throw.
Maybe it’s under the smelter?
She leapt over a conveyer belt—which still had the first drone she’d encountered propped up against it—and dashed around a loader that was picking ore off a belt and dumping it into a furnace. When she finally got a visual of the bot’s former location, there was no sign of the machine.
Biting back a curse, Mira sent a new sweep pattern to her drones and began to backtrack, eyes peeled for any suspicious movement.
That was easier said than done, given that nearly everything in the building was moving.
She was halfway back to where she’d started when her armor detected motion behind her. Mira spun to see nothing out of the ordinary, suddenly wondering if the security drones had stealth systems.
Throwing caution to the wind, she set her rifle to its hammer-fist pulse mode and let fire with three blasts. The third hit something solid to her left, slamming the invisible enemy into a cooling machine.
A section of it became visible, and she strode forward, firing another trio of pulse blasts at the drone before switching to the electron beam and pummeling it with relativistic electrons.
The assault pushed the security drone into the equipment, and it wiggled back and forth, trying to get free while smoke poured from it.
Janice commented.
Mira shook her head, deciding that another round of rail shots wouldn’t hurt, hammering the drone with a final barrage before turning her back on it and walking to where Janice had indicated the pad would be.
Three minutes later, she was back with Lorra, who had both freed the alien machine from the silvery puddle and completely smashed the refinery’s defense drone.