Read Online To Dream in the City of Sorrows by Babylon 5 - Free Book Online
Authors: Babylon 5
Tags: Fiction, General, Science-Fiction, Romance, Space Opera, SciFi, American, Extraterrestrial beings, Babylon 5 (Television Program)
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Personal Flyer, banked right just a touch, and saw his target – the massive natural rock formation known as Perdition Bridge. There was just enough width under the rock bridge for the wing span of his flyer to pass through, if his heading was straight and true. And it always was.
Marcus eased to full throttle and as his flyer hit maximum speed, he shot under the bridge and began his climb, eased into his backward loop to follow the 360degree path that would bring him back down and under the bridge again. Just as he came out of the last part of the curve back in front of the bridge, the planet, perhaps displeased at seeing this daredevil display one time too many, shook the small craft with an unexpectedly violent gust of wind, causing it to slip right.
Marcus had only seconds to fight the craft into a controlled slip left or he would lose the right wing of his craft – and everything else. The flyer swooped through the opening and shuddered as the right wing tip scraped the rock face in a shower of sparks, then emerged with a violent yaw to the left that was quickly becoming an uncontrolled tumble.
Marcus fought for control of the craft as it flashed through his mind that this would be a particularly stupid way to die. He had to risk activating the computer and the automatic stabilizers without shutting off manual control. He hit the sequence of buttons, causing the whole craft to lurch violently, but within a few seconds Marcus had the flyer back under control and on its original heading.
He quickly disabled the manual override and let the autopilot take sole control as he concentrated on getting his heart to stop thumping quite so wildly, then: “computer. Damage report.”
“Nonterminal damage to wing tip. Compensating for additional drag. Flight plan may proceed with caution, but fuel reserves at minimum.”
Marcus took back the controls and continued toward Mining and Refinery Site 7 to do the routine inspection for which he had come planetside in the first place.
Arisia 3 was a bleak, violent, and uninhabitable world, orbiting an unremarkable F5 star on the far edge of explored space. Two-thirds the size of Earth with three times the density, the small planet, with its 2-G gravity, its poisonous, radioactive atmosphere, the scorching winds, and high degree of tectonic and volcanic activity, was not a place where Humans could linger for long. It might have been simply dismissed as a tiny, forgettable piece of Hell, if it hadn’t been rich in the most valuable substance in the known galaxy: Quantium 40, the stuff that made jump gates, and thus interstellar travel, possible. It could be very profitable to mine, but cost-intensive and dangerous.
It was the rarest of minerals, naturally radioactive, chemically complex, and possessing an extremely unusual, naturally occurring quasi-crystalline structure. In its raw form, Q-40 could only be found in small amounts in other rock, mostly on Class 4 worlds like Arisia 3.
Mobile robot mining machines, directed from the colony in orbit, dug out the rock and delivered it to the squat, cumbersome but mobile automated refineries, which resembled, to Marcus’s mind, nothing so much as giant, steam-belching beetles. There the first crude processing took place, separating the Q-40 from the other rock.
This automation meant workers only went planetside to conduct inspections, carry out repairs, and pick up the crudely refined Q-40 for transfer to the Orbital Refinery Platform, where usable Q-40 was separated from tainted and improperly formed amounts.
Extreme care had to be taken during every phase of this process, as the resulting purified form of Quantium 40 was so radioactive two grams of it would kill a man within fifteen feet, and so extremely unstable, one mistake might cause an uncontrolled chain reaction that could result in massive irradiation or even an explosion.
Marcus nosed his flyer down to begin his aerial inspection of Site 7. He knew that Central Control
Marcus eased to full throttle and as his flyer hit maximum speed, he shot under the bridge and began his climb, eased into his backward loop to follow the 360degree path that would bring him back down and under the bridge again. Just as he came out of the last part of the curve back in front of the bridge, the planet, perhaps displeased at seeing this daredevil display one time too many, shook the small craft with an unexpectedly violent gust of wind, causing it to slip right.
Marcus had only seconds to fight the craft into a controlled slip left or he would lose the right wing of his craft – and everything else. The flyer swooped through the opening and shuddered as the right wing tip scraped the rock face in a shower of sparks, then emerged with a violent yaw to the left that was quickly becoming an uncontrolled tumble.
Marcus fought for control of the craft as it flashed through his mind that this would be a particularly stupid way to die. He had to risk activating the computer and the automatic stabilizers without shutting off manual control. He hit the sequence of buttons, causing the whole craft to lurch violently, but within a few seconds Marcus had the flyer back under control and on its original heading.
He quickly disabled the manual override and let the autopilot take sole control as he concentrated on getting his heart to stop thumping quite so wildly, then: “computer. Damage report.”
“Nonterminal damage to wing tip. Compensating for additional drag. Flight plan may proceed with caution, but fuel reserves at minimum.”
Marcus took back the controls and continued toward Mining and Refinery Site 7 to do the routine inspection for which he had come planetside in the first place.
Arisia 3 was a bleak, violent, and uninhabitable world, orbiting an unremarkable F5 star on the far edge of explored space. Two-thirds the size of Earth with three times the density, the small planet, with its 2-G gravity, its poisonous, radioactive atmosphere, the scorching winds, and high degree of tectonic and volcanic activity, was not a place where Humans could linger for long. It might have been simply dismissed as a tiny, forgettable piece of Hell, if it hadn’t been rich in the most valuable substance in the known galaxy: Quantium 40, the stuff that made jump gates, and thus interstellar travel, possible. It could be very profitable to mine, but cost-intensive and dangerous.
It was the rarest of minerals, naturally radioactive, chemically complex, and possessing an extremely unusual, naturally occurring quasi-crystalline structure. In its raw form, Q-40 could only be found in small amounts in other rock, mostly on Class 4 worlds like Arisia 3.
Mobile robot mining machines, directed from the colony in orbit, dug out the rock and delivered it to the squat, cumbersome but mobile automated refineries, which resembled, to Marcus’s mind, nothing so much as giant, steam-belching beetles. There the first crude processing took place, separating the Q-40 from the other rock.
This automation meant workers only went planetside to conduct inspections, carry out repairs, and pick up the crudely refined Q-40 for transfer to the Orbital Refinery Platform, where usable Q-40 was separated from tainted and improperly formed amounts.
Extreme care had to be taken during every phase of this process, as the resulting purified form of Quantium 40 was so radioactive two grams of it would kill a man within fifteen feet, and so extremely unstable, one mistake might cause an uncontrolled chain reaction that could result in massive irradiation or even an explosion.
Marcus nosed his flyer down to begin his aerial inspection of Site 7. He knew that Central Control
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