wanted to see the buoy impact, but he didn't want that to be the last thing he ever saw. It would suffice to watch the impact on the targeting cameras. Freeing one hand from the flight yoke, Kieran keyed one of his external cameras to track the buoy. He kept half an eye on the display as he continued pulling out of his dive. The buoy was seconds from impact.
Two, one —
The buoy disappeared.
Kieran blinked. It didn't burrow into the surface like it should have. There were no debris from the impact. Nothing. One moment it was there, speeding toward the surface of the asteroid, and the next it was simply gone, as if it had been nothing more than a hologram. Kieran shook his head. It didn't make any sense. Maybe he'd missed the impact. He fiddled with the camera controls for a second, panning and zooming around the surface of the asteroid, looking for a rapidly-spreading cloud of dust and broken rocks.
But there was nothing. Not a trace of an impact anywhere. Unable to believe it, Kieran brought his flitter around in a hard turn and dived in closer to the asteroid, making a close pass over the area where his buoy should have impacted.
There was still no sign of it.
A soft chime issued from his comm. Kieran's eyes flicked to the display. A glowing green one-liner had appeared:
Mining Buoy — Kieran Hawker — Loc: 28-76-33
His buoy was transmitting. Kieran selected the transmission and punched in a request for details. The signal was very weak; it would never make it back to the gate. If he weren't so close to the asteroid, he would've never detected it. Perhaps the same thing — whatever that was — had happened to his last buoy. But if that's the case, then there should be two transmissions . . . .
And there was only one; the signal appeared to be coming from deep within the asteroid, which should have been impossible. Mining buoys don’t burrow that deep . . . . Kieran sighed and ran a hand through his short, blond hair. Something very strange was going on.
Well, let's at least check the data. Kieran sent a request to download the data the buoy was transmitting. It took a few seconds for the download to complete, but then Kieran found himself looking at another puzzling phenomenon. Preliminary scans showed exactly what he had seen yesterday: 9.6% of the asteroid's considerable mass was tetrillium ore. But the rock samples taken by the buoy (wherever it was) contained no traces of tetrillium. Kieran brought up the results of the gravitic and seismic imaging scans for a more detailed look.
Kieran blinked stupidly at the images. Instead of running through the asteroid in veins like it should, the tetrillium was all concentrated in the center of the asteroid. Suddenly, he understood and his heart sank. There was no tetrillium ore in the asteroid. His sensors, and the buoy's were detecting a whole space station’s worth of tetrillium plating.
Someone had built a secret facility at the core of an enormous and depressingly useless rock. Which explains why this belt is uncharted. Someone didn't want it to be found.
Kieran pounded the armrest of his flight chair in frustration. Kefick! He'd spent 1000 tokens, and 1000 more he didn't even have to spend — for what? To find a base that no one wanted to be found — and a whole belt of more than likely useless rocks.
Probably an outlaw base . . .
No. That wouldn't explain why this entire area of space is uncharted. Outlaws don't have the kind of resources to prevent that data from surfacing.
His curiosity getting the better of him, Kieran brought his flitter around again. As he came in for another pass over the area where his buoy had disappeared, Kieran slowed to nearly a dead stop, and hovered a few hundred micró-astroms above the pebbly, gray surface of the asteroid. According to his sensors, the entire asteroid was devoid of any irregular, overly symmetrical features on the surface — nothing that could be part of a space
Two, one —
The buoy disappeared.
Kieran blinked. It didn't burrow into the surface like it should have. There were no debris from the impact. Nothing. One moment it was there, speeding toward the surface of the asteroid, and the next it was simply gone, as if it had been nothing more than a hologram. Kieran shook his head. It didn't make any sense. Maybe he'd missed the impact. He fiddled with the camera controls for a second, panning and zooming around the surface of the asteroid, looking for a rapidly-spreading cloud of dust and broken rocks.
But there was nothing. Not a trace of an impact anywhere. Unable to believe it, Kieran brought his flitter around in a hard turn and dived in closer to the asteroid, making a close pass over the area where his buoy should have impacted.
There was still no sign of it.
A soft chime issued from his comm. Kieran's eyes flicked to the display. A glowing green one-liner had appeared:
Mining Buoy — Kieran Hawker — Loc: 28-76-33
His buoy was transmitting. Kieran selected the transmission and punched in a request for details. The signal was very weak; it would never make it back to the gate. If he weren't so close to the asteroid, he would've never detected it. Perhaps the same thing — whatever that was — had happened to his last buoy. But if that's the case, then there should be two transmissions . . . .
And there was only one; the signal appeared to be coming from deep within the asteroid, which should have been impossible. Mining buoys don’t burrow that deep . . . . Kieran sighed and ran a hand through his short, blond hair. Something very strange was going on.
Well, let's at least check the data. Kieran sent a request to download the data the buoy was transmitting. It took a few seconds for the download to complete, but then Kieran found himself looking at another puzzling phenomenon. Preliminary scans showed exactly what he had seen yesterday: 9.6% of the asteroid's considerable mass was tetrillium ore. But the rock samples taken by the buoy (wherever it was) contained no traces of tetrillium. Kieran brought up the results of the gravitic and seismic imaging scans for a more detailed look.
Kieran blinked stupidly at the images. Instead of running through the asteroid in veins like it should, the tetrillium was all concentrated in the center of the asteroid. Suddenly, he understood and his heart sank. There was no tetrillium ore in the asteroid. His sensors, and the buoy's were detecting a whole space station’s worth of tetrillium plating.
Someone had built a secret facility at the core of an enormous and depressingly useless rock. Which explains why this belt is uncharted. Someone didn't want it to be found.
Kieran pounded the armrest of his flight chair in frustration. Kefick! He'd spent 1000 tokens, and 1000 more he didn't even have to spend — for what? To find a base that no one wanted to be found — and a whole belt of more than likely useless rocks.
Probably an outlaw base . . .
No. That wouldn't explain why this entire area of space is uncharted. Outlaws don't have the kind of resources to prevent that data from surfacing.
His curiosity getting the better of him, Kieran brought his flitter around again. As he came in for another pass over the area where his buoy had disappeared, Kieran slowed to nearly a dead stop, and hovered a few hundred micró-astroms above the pebbly, gray surface of the asteroid. According to his sensors, the entire asteroid was devoid of any irregular, overly symmetrical features on the surface — nothing that could be part of a space
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