NIGHTMARE
by Blue
BlackJack stood at the porthole, staring out at
the mining ship Bolida. He could hear the heavy
breathing from his left where Franco, ex UEE Marine
Combat Engineer, stood. From his right wafted the
light fragrance of Frenchy’s aftershave. Ever the dandy
but with the looks to pull it off. Not for BlackJack, his
face stoic masking his roiling emotions. Through the
glassine he gazed upon the floating wreckage of his
former vessel. A swirling, whirling mass of burned and
twisted wreckage. He felt the slight pressure from
the pocket of his upper arm thanks to the 3 UEE cash
chips within. He had just sold the wreckage outside
to Zanther Goose, scrap dealer and local scumbag,
dividing the pitiful amount into three chips. There
should have been five but Dakkson and Media were
dead, dead, dead.
Dakkson was - or had been - the engineer aboard
the Bolida, and Media the ship’s hotshot gunner. He,
BlackJack, copilot Frenchy and hired gun Franco, were
all that remained of the Bolide Mining Company and
their single ship Bolida. It was still hard to understand
what had happened. Advocacy Marshall Adames’
investigation had been thorough and very serious. He
had ordered the three of them interviewed, or rather
interrogated, separately here on Station 13.
Memories forced their way into BlackJack’s mind as
he stared at the wreckage. He had been in the pilot’s
seat monitoring the progress of the mining drone
and the two extendable mining lasers Frenchy was
operating. The ore storage containers were 95%
full and it would take less than an hour to fill them
completely.
A friend of his, an explorer and ‘adventurer’ named
Gandy, had tipped him off to a small, stable
aggregation within the Oort cloud here on the fringes
of the system. BlackJack had always found Gandy
reliable ever since he had saved the explorer’s life
and ship some years back. Once inside the collection
of asteroids and dead comets, seemingly stable after
billions of years, he had flown to the area Gandy
had pinpointed. There, floating within a crowd of
rocks, big and small, loomed an asteroid. Not visibly
different from any of the others, but it sent the
magnetor scanner right into the credits level.
A test drill from Frenchy’s mining laser was brought in
and run through the assayer equipment. Decent ores
of a somewhat unusual variety. A bit more valuable
than normal, but that wasn’t the prize.
4
They hit the jackpot! The readings for Rare elements:
11.7%! More than twice anything BlackJack had ever
found before. This was money in the bank for all of
them if the veins held true.
With the Bolida repositioned to face the asteroid,
Franco launched the mining drone and Frenchy
started heating the digging site. Media waited in
the turret of course, her twin laser gatlings buzzing
and turning. Dakkson manned the radar and comm
station, keeping an electronic eye open. They were
not actually that close to the frontier but the Oort
cloud of any system could be dangerous. The UEE
simply did not have the resources to patrol so far
out, so this could easily be considered lawless space.
Piracy was a real danger in such a place. Devils
could show up anywhere and they did like to shadow
mining ships.
BlackJack had hired an escort, a combat pilot named
Ace-O-Spades flying a Super Hornet. Ace had
remained with them on a continuous patrol. Then
came the decision BlackJack would bitterly regret
for the rest of his life. The contract expired and Ace
had to leave for another. BlackJack decided to stay
another 12 hours and finish filling those ore bins with
the rich ore. Turned out to be an hour too long.
A few kilometers behind the Bolida, several degrees
to the left, lay a small asteroid about half a kilometer
in diameter. On the right and behind at the same
distance hung another small asteroid, around the
same size. Media called them the Twins, Left and
Right.
Another 5 kilometers behind both a very large
asteroid they called Bruiser sat, roughly 12 kilometers
in diameter. Barely visible behind them the system’s
sun shone, hardly more than a twinkle but still casing
enough light for Bruiser to cast a shadow all the way
to the Bolida.
The beam entered the top left of the ship, passing
through shields and armor with ease. So brilliant
blue white that the sudden glare brought their heads
around and they could barely see the two halves of
Dakkson’s body being sucked out the hole where the
beam had exited the other side of the hull.
Helmets sealed automatically and the repair bot
sprang out of his niche, pulling out circular patches
and heading for the nearest puncture.