Chapter 1: 43821

Why does it have to be so cold all the time?

Solan Darkner looked out over the empty glaciers of planet 43821 and couldn’t help but feel depressed. The planet didn’t even have a name. Just a serial number for the mining rights. This was his fourth new home in three years. Ever since his mother had died Solan had joined his father, a scientist with the Callornan Mining Syndicate, as he went from world to world looking for different ore deposits.

Not for the first time Solan looked up at the night sky and wished that his father had been involved in shipping, or politics, or a circus performer. Anything but a miner. Anything that was on a world you could go outside on without freezing solid. After his mother had died, he’d been dragged to every slag heap and black rock the old man could find as he threw himself further and further into his work.

If only someone would find a mineral deposit on a nice beach for once. Maybe then I could escape for an hour and feel like I had a normal life.

“Ready for work boy?”

Solan didn’t have to turn. He could hear the impatient scowl in his father’s voice. He hurried to zip up his coveralls and make sure he had everything for the day. “Yeah dad, I’m coming.”

He took a last look at the stars out the window and sighed.

It turned out his father was going to be sent to a new location two sectors away to scout it out before operations began there. Solan was going to be given the “great opportunity” to run things here while he was away. Which amounted to monitoring the digger drones for programing errors and filing reports. The operation mostly ran itself once everything was set up by the Syndicate. He was in his father’s office watching him pack and listening to him run down everything that needed to be done for the hundredth time.

“Just monitor the drones to make sure that they don’t get bunched up at the offloading point. And file the reports to the sector office as they come in from the surveyors. Even you shouldn’t be able to screw this up. If you do a decent job the Syndicate will pick up your contract for ten years. Think of it Solan! Following in my footsteps. You’ll be set with a job for life.” The elder Darkner couldn’t think of a better thing to have. He doubted his lay about son would amount to much else, he thought this much responsibility might be too much for him. The boy was smart enough, that was true, but there was no motivation. Would it kill him to show some appreciation for everything the company gave them? If he screwed this up and it reflected poorly on him, he’d have to send him back to Callorna and be rid of him for good.

“Don’t mess this up son. You know what will happen if you do.”

Solan nodded. he knew his father would send him back to live in a gutter if he didn’t do as he was told. If there had been any other family around when his mother died, the old man never would have taken him in. There wasn’t anything he could screw up here while his father was away, but that didn’t stop the old bastard from implying he was worthless.

Wolden tried a different tact, “Remember, we provide the materials that build civilizations!”

Solan wanted to vomit. His father’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. Between that and his reciting of the company line he might as well have been a holo ad played before the local news. He nodded to the old man just to get the talk over with.

Before he knew it his father had left in the only ship they had, and he was alone. He walked through the main facility to make sure everything was running smoothly. He knew the whole place by heart. It was all the same standard prefab units that the Mining Syndicate put on every one of their worlds. Clean white walls and grey sandcrete floors all over. There were no windows to show the outside except in the living quarters and the small communal kitchen. Solan headed to his office, there was already a pile of reports on his desk. A printer spat out hardcopy printouts of everything that happened each day. It was his job to review them and send them on to the main sector office. Read, scan, send, repeat. Day after day. He sat down at his desk and started going through them.

He had made it through a few dozen papers when he saw one that didn’t look normal. A survey drone had been blown off course by a storm and recorded a landslide halfway around the world on the southern continent. That by itself wasn’t unusual. With all the wind and snow, avalanches were common enough. Even the drone not being where it was supposed to be wasn’t strange. What stood out on the page was the fact that this particular landslide had uncovered a vein of pure tenactite ore.

Solan reviewed the paper again to be sure. Tenactite was extremely valuable, the processed ore was used on the hulls of warships. The trade and use of it was strictly regulated in U.S. territory. The amount exposed by the avalanche wasn’t a lot, but it was a small fortune for one person.

And I’m the only one who knows it’s here.

Solan looked back and forth between the sheet of paper in his hand and the sizeable workload covering his desk a few more times before getting up to go for a walk. He tried to think calmly about the situation.

Just do the job ... File the report with the others and forget about it ... The drone crews can dig it out and get it ready for transport ... Could never dig out the whole lode, everyone would wonder where I got it ... So, I just take enough to set myself up nicely for a while ... If I get caught, I’ll be mining for tungsten with my teeth...

By this point he had wandered aimlessly through the corridors over to the mining drone hangar. He strolled slowly through the rows of silent machinery, the steady tread of his steps like a metronome calling out the cadence of his thoughts. He could file the report like usual. The diggers would retrieve the ore, and a freighter would pick it up in a day or two. The Syndicate’s bottom line would improve, and his father would get a note in his company file. And Solan would be stuck right here sending reports until he died.

But his father wasn’t here. And the only evidence of the lode was the piece of paper in his hand. Once the survey drones sent in their daily reports their memories were wiped to make room for the next day’s information. If he didn’t send the information to the sector office, no one would know it was there. Especially if the tenactite was gone before the next survey flight in that area. There would never be a better time to get out of this place. Reaching the end of the warehouse, he raised his hand to dust off the last of the ore carriers and smiled.

You can’t miss something if you don’t know it’s there.

He popped open the instrument panel on the carrier’s truck sized bin and began entering command codes. “Well old man, let’s see if all those hours of training can be put to good use.”

The plan to get the ore out had been a good one. One team of drones had been sent out to mine for the Tenactite. Once Solan was sure they had gotten it out another team was sent. The first team delivered the ore, then went back to digging in the original spot. On the books it would look like a simple command error. The second team began digging at a higher elevation than the first, causing a cave-in. Ore diggers were essentially large buckets with engines and shovels attached so their systems weren’t sophisticated enough to record anything. They went where they were told and kept digging until they were full. With all of the diggers in the cave-in and their processors destroyed, the only record of the whole thing was the one he would file in the company log, which would list the whole thing as a failed iron excavation. No mention of tenactite, and no ore to be missed because of the cave in.

There were now one hundred kilos of Tenactite ore waiting for the next transport off-world. And it looked like it would have a long wait. The next manned ship would get to 43821 in four days. It wasn’t worth the risk of stowing away on a drone-controlled freighter. There were too many stories out there about people suffocating or freezing to death on those ships for them to all be false. Most drone ships were packed so tight a fly couldn’t sneak in anyway. No, Solan decided, his best bet was to wait for a ship with an actual pilot that he could bribe.

And one who has a wife with expensive taste, I hope.

He was in his office again going over star charts to find a place to make his start. Anywhere in the Unified Systems was out. Even if the company never found out about the missing ore, his father would still be looking for him. A third of the hologram he was studying went dark as he input his information. The other side of the galaxy was the Alien Expanse, any human there would stick out like a sore thumb. Another third went dark. That left the middle third as the only available option. Fringe Space divided the human dominated, and supposedly democratic, Unified Systems from the various empires and collectives of the Alien Expanse. Here you could find almost anything from any world on either side of the galaxy. It was also an area of space where if you had the cash and the knowhow anything, and anyone, was for sale. And hardly anyone asked questions.

He scrolled through the different systems, discarding the ones that were too hot, too cold, or too dangerous, until one seemed to jump out at him. The Zendi system. Standard gravity with a mild climate, it was closer to Alien space than he would have liked but the native species was listed as humanoid. An image of one revolved over his viewer.

“Tall at an average height over two meters but tend to be slender.” He muttered to himself as he read. “No hair, no ears, six fingers on each hand ... Yeah, yeah, where is it? Aha! Personality, normally easy going, honest to a fault. This is most likely due to a unique frontal lobe that allows the species to detect any sort of lie. Recommend completely open dealings as species is known to shut off all communication to individuals that have lied to them previously.”

Solan sat back in his chair and stared at the holo. How the hell could he make a deal using stolen property if he had to be absolutely honest? Still, he felt drawn to this planet for some reason. It reminded him of Callorna. He realized for the first time that if he followed this course, he wouldn’t be able to go home for a long time, if ever.

Callorna was where I grew up, but it’s just an empty house with bad memories now.

His mother had been sick for a long time before the end. He missed the environment of his homeworld, but living there again would just remind him of her fading away day after day. The projector was still cycling through its information on the Zendi system in front of him. Three large continents on four oceans. Limited seismic activity. No notable exports but due to the Zendi’s compulsion to deal honestly it had become a crossroads for trade goods. Fringe Space merchants from both sides liked to retire in the system so it also boasted an above average secondhand ship industry.

“There could be worse places to start out in. Zendi it is.” Now he just had to wait for the pilot to get there.

Four days had never gone by so fast. Solan was in what amounted to the complex’s flight center, meaning it was a room with a passable subspace radio and a switch to turn on the landing field’s homing beacon. Minute after minute went by and the radio remained silent. Four crates sat by the door containing the tenactite and the few possessions he was bringing with him. The last few days had been spent learning the basics of the Zendi language and copying everything out of the Syndicate’s database that had to do with Fringe Space or the Alien Expanse. Thanks to the company’s policy of knowing as much as possible about potential clients he now had a cultural database on most of the species he was likely to come across.

“Not that I’ll get to talk to any of them if this freighter never...”

“This is the Roarin’ Lion calling 43821 landing field, come in, over. Repeat, this is the Lion, where are you Wolden? You’re too dull to have a hobby so get off your ass and turn on the damn beacon.”

Solan hurriedly switched on the landing beacon and grabbed the radio mic. “Roarin’ Lion this is um... 43821 landing field. Uh, Wolden’s not here but you’re um, clear to land.”

“Waddya mean Wolden’s not there? There’s only one guy that operates for Callorna Mining in places like these and I doubt very much that he took a vacation.”

“Well he uh ... he went-”

“I can see you’re either really new at this or you’re just a bad liar. Either way you better have both hands where I can see ‘em by the time I land this thing.” With that the pilot signed off muttering about ‘punk-ass new operators jerking him around’.

Solan watched the Roarin’ Lion come into land, his mind a swirling mess of anger and confusion. How was he supposed to bribe a captain like this? And worse yet, if he did manage to cut a deal, he knew his father and would probably turn him in the first chance he got. He kept pacing the small room, wringing his hands and trying to come up with a plan. There just weren’t any options open. It was either go forward the way he had planned, or keep his mouth shut and let business go on as usual. The second was no kind of option at all. If he didn’t get off on this ship, there wasn’t another manned one until after his father was scheduled to get back. That would mean being caught red handed. His father would investigate the staged accident until he found out everything.

Once he did Wolden would have no problem turning his son over to Syndicate Internal Security. Family connection would mean nothing to the older Darkner if his career was at risk. The S.I.S. wouldn’t even take a second look at the evidence before sending his son off to some prison asteroid to disappear. Solan knew the only emotion his father might show would be relief that his career and life were safe. The thought made him shudder with resentment. The feeling settled in his stomach and hardened into an iron-willed determination. Either way, he risked being caught.

Might as well take the chance of getting out of here.