Align yourself along the axis of rotation. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the first step. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the key. Along these planetary rings there are thousands upon thousands of rocks, bouncing off one another like croquette balls, spinning in slow motion in the vacuum. That spin, you see, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the problem. You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t keep a bead on the same spot for long, the limpet drones get confused and clang into each other, or they smash into the rock as it spins into them, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a mess. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The good news is, that mess is really just a delay. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a temporary slowdown in the profitability of your deep space mining expedition. The stakes aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that high. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll live. Still, if something\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worth doing, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worth doing right, yeah? So, just picture the asteroid as a spinning top, park your ship right on top of it, and then get to work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m doing. I find an asteroid that the spectral scanner reports as having high metal content. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spinning, like all of them. I align myself along the axis of rotation. Now the spot in front of me is barely moving at all, and glints with the promise of treasure. I deploy my mining laser, and it pops out of my hull just beside my cockpit. I gently squeeze the trigger, and a violet beam of focused light is instantly lancing into the rock… <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It lances in\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It lances in, the thermal beam lances into the Titan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s flesh, dumping waste heat into this vile leviathan making me invisible to its hundreds of roving guards, stay low, stay cool, skim along the surface and my wingman cries out and his thermal beam blinks off malfunction oh shit oh shit he screams, I tell him don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t boost whatever you do don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t boost stay still but he already panicked and slammed his thrusters, his ship lights up and accelerates away and he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even make it ten seconds before he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ripped to shreds by Thargon missiles don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t look don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t cry stay cool stay cool don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t let them see you<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n No.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not there. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m here. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just an asteroid, a hunk of minerals in a ring around an empty world. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a city-sized alien super station sitting in a cloud of caustic fog. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just a damned rock. I release my grip on the trigger and the mining laser fades away. It hurts to do so. I look down and realize I was gripping the flight stick so hard, my hand has seized in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I flex my gloved fingers open, closed, open, closed. I look up and notice, annoyed, that I had drifted and need to reposition myself. I align myself along the axis of rotation. I can scan it at this range, and get a nice clean picture of what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s inside from this angle. Paydirt! Multiple platinum deposits just below the surface, and a core of raw painite. A small fortune. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Okay, the platinum first. I spool up the subsurface displacement missile rack and position my ship in a synchronous orbit, matching exactly the spin of the rock so that it looks stock still and the rest of the galaxy is spinning around us. I hold down the trigger and a drill-tipped missile soars out, straight into the rock, and begins boring into the rock. At the exact depth of the deposit, I release the trigger, signaling the shaped explosives in the missile to detonate. The small hole the missile had just created explodes out and metal chunks fly into space…<\/p>\n\n\n\n They fly out into space…<\/p>\n\n\n\n They fly into space the missile bursts under the surface of the Titan and they fly out into space, fifteen human beings trapped in Thargoid pods now free, go go go send out the drones retrieve them all quickly quickly before they notice I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m here, four saved, eight saved, twelve saved, a sickening thrum fills cloud oh god they see me eject heatsink shut thermal vents turn away no damnit I missed three of them, no don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t look back, they were people, sons, daughters, who do you suppose they were the ones I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t pluck out in time, don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t look back just get to safety Basilisk inbound can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t outrun it if they see me cover somebody give me some cover is anybody out there somebody help me<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n No.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not there. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m here. I know we did our best, we rescued thousands of abducted humans from their alien cells. The Titans are all dead, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s behind us now. Get a grip. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got a job to do here. Compared to everything we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve done, everything we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen, this is a milk run. Just align yourself to the axis of rotation, inspect the stone, get the goods, get home. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that easy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I finish up the platinum and start looking at the core. I arm the charge launcher. The scanner points out the five spots I need to hit to fracture this rock and expose the precious gems inside. I form the map in my head, the course I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll take as I thrust laterally around the perimeter of the asteroid. Calculate carefully, then move swiftly. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m circling sideways around the rock and when my nose passes the designated points, I flick the trigger. One charge, two charges, three four five down in one pass. I smile, allowing myself to acknowledge that yes, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m good at this. Reverse now, just get to a minimum safe distance. Without a second\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hesitation, I push the small red button to trigger the charges. All five explode in unison, ripping shockwaves through the asteroid and causing it to fracture into about a dozen significant pieces and a spray of fine particulates. The halo of dust expands out, carrying the momentum of the blast. The wave reaches my hull and pushes my ship back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The blast wave pushes my ship back…<\/p>\n\n\n\n It pushes my ship back…<\/p>\n\n\n\n It pushes my ship back, a blast larger than life flinging our entire squadron, hundreds of ships, away from the dying Titan, faster, faster, faster as my Frame Shift Drive struggles to compensate and keep me from being rendered into paste with the acceleration, faster, faster, faster and twisting and turning as we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re catapulted through the caustic cloud too fast too fast we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not going to make it, Cojico is dying, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care, Earth is saved, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care, Sol is safe again and I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fucking care because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122M NEVER LEAVING THIS CLOUD ALIVE AM I, which way is forwards which way is backwards almost out almost<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n No.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not there. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m here. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m floating in my cockpit, as I seem to have freed myself from my harness. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m curled in a fetal ball, floating in zero G. Tears are suspended in front of my face, drifting in the thin cockpit air like a constellation in the night sky. <\/p>\n\n\n\n No.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cocijo is dead.\u00c2\u00a0 We won the war.\u00c2\u00a0 Some of us even survived to tell the tale.\u00c2\u00a0 Now we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re here,\u00c2\u00a0 back home, back to work, back to the lives we left behind before we took up the call to save humankind.\u00c2\u00a0 So, that what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m doing.\u00c2\u00a0 How long was I out?\u00c2\u00a0 No matter, minor setback, another temporary slowdown in the profitability of this deep space mining expedition. I pick out another rock in the endless field before me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I align myself along the axis of rotation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The stakes aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Align yourself along the axis of rotation. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the first step. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the key. Along these planetary rings there are thousands upon thousands of rocks, bouncing off one another like croquette balls, spinning in slow motion in the vacuum. That spin, you see, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the problem. You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t keep a bead on the same spot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morsepower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morsepower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morsepower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morsepower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morsepower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=437"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/morsepower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":439,"href":"https:\/\/morsepower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437\/revisions\/439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morsepower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morsepower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morsepower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}