All chapters up to the attack on the construction site have been reworked, so look for the new ones instead of reading the old ones.
I have been working on this story for nearly a year, hitting multiple writer blocks and turning towards other stories in the meantime. But finally I have the majority of the story out. Hope its still interesting to read, tell me what you think.
The story is beginning in Summer 2017, so this is before CI had more than a few scraps of the Normandy started.
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Two men were sitting on a console in the large control room of ESA in Darmstadt.
“You think we will be able do this?”
“Yes, I think so. As long as the governments back in Brussels don’t do something stupid, we will go through the mission as planned.”
“Do you think the US will protest again?”
“No, they did not protest that much when we finished the fourth ISV.”
“Is everything assembled at our depot?”
“Yes, the last checks were completed three days ago. All astronauts have been send up and everyone is just waiting for the ‘go’ signal.”
----
In the year 2016 the growing fleet of Interplanetary Space Vehicles of ESA and JAXA had been sent on several smaller missions to Venus and the Belt. The longest mission had been the voyage of the ISV Nobu Shirase around Saturn. ESA had called it an endurance test and dropped a number of scientific satellites around the planet, but called the ISV back home soon after.
But after this none of the spaceships had left ESAs space depot again. Some people said ESA and JAXA were tired with senseless flying around. Others said, the EU governments were not willing to pay for it anymore.
But the second step on ESAs “10 year plan to conquer Brussels” began exactly as the last step. In the middle of a storm of reporters, camera flashes flickering off like lightning without thunder.
ESAs press speaker and the representative of JAXA were grinning into the cameras, it was time to hit the naysayer with another club on the head. And he would hit them hard!
“Welcome ladies and gentlemen.” he started with a smile.
“In the last six months since our flyby mission around Saturn there have been voices that said the cooperation between ESA and JAXA has burned out. That we are without a goal to reach. Today you are here to learn that nothing could be further from the truth.”
He looked to his Japanese colleague, which continued.
“When the Thor Heyerdahl came back from Mars, we had proven that the solar system is still open for exploration, even without Handwavium. But as important as this, we also showed everyone the potential of Fusion reactor JAXA provided for the spaceship. After we returned several governments approached our consortium to see how fast we could build a reactor to supply electrical power to them. There was only one problem. The supply of Helium-3!”
Several reporters nodded. The debate about Nuclear Fusion had heated up since the first prototype of the Honda Fusion Reactor two years ago, but died down soon after. The problem was that to get a pure aneutronic fusion reaction, you had to use pure Helium-3 as fuel. Digging over thousands of squaremiles on the Moon to mine it was out of question, so the only source were some Fen who did the insane job to dive into Jupiter to get it.
And nobody wanted to make their power generation totally dependent on the goodwill of a few Fen.
“We all know the discussions about Lunar sources of Helium-3, but to say it again, it will not happen. The Moon is not empty anymore, and the amount of Helium-3 in the dust is just too small.”
The ESA press speaker nodded to his colleague.
“12 months ago ESA and JAXA contacted their governments for a proposal to fix this problem. Since then, we have shipped hundreds of tons of steel and ceramic up to our orbital depot, together with the finest hightech our countries can provide. A group of forty astronauts are waiting in orbit to begin the largest space mission Europe and Japan have ever done before.”
The room was filled with quiet murmurs now while everyone was trying to guess what was going on.
“This evening, the Thor Heyerdahl, the Leif Erickson, the Nobu Shirase and the Ferdinand Magellan will depart from our depot and will be heading for Saturn. They will be carrying the first pieces of equipment to set up a permanent space station there, where some of the brightest engineers of our countries will live. If everything will go according to plan, we will deliver the first batch of Helium-3 within 24 months.”
“Why Saturn? Isn’t this awful far away?” one of the reporters asked.
“There are three places where one could mine Helium-3 in the solar system if you don’t want to dig through millions of tons of lunar rocks. Jupiter, Saturn or Uranus.
Uranus is too far away for our current ISVs, we cannot get there and back without refueling, which make missions much more dangerous.
Jupiter is a lot closer than Saturn, but it has also a much higher mass, which makes it harder to get into a low orbit and back out of it.
The decision to build the station around Saturn was made as a compromise between distance and depth of the gravity well. The fact that one of the larger Fen factions have their capitol there makes it a safer neighborhood too.”
----
“Darmstadt Control, this is the Thor Heyerdahl. Mission checks are done, all four ships are reporting condition green, we are ready for the first part of the mission.”
“Thor Heyerdahl, here is Darmstadt Control. Mission countdown restarted at T minus 15 minutes, prepare for launch sequence.”
After the flight of the Thor Heyerdahl ESA and JAXA had decided to change the design of their new space ships. Armed with the data gathered during the long flight, several small changes had been made in the engine section of the ship. Simultaneously they had cut the Thor Heyerdahl into four parts, connected by large docking rings.
As her sister ships, the Heyerdahl now were made up by an front crew section and an aft engine section. Depending on the mission different cargo or carrier modules could be placed between crew and engine section, together with one or multiple modules for carrying reaction mass.
All four ISVs had been equipped with a large cargo and a single reaction mass module, which allowed each of the ISVs to transport a total of one hundred metric tons of cargo to Saturn. And each of them was filled with equipment up to the limit.
‘And that’s just the first part of the cargo. We will have to come back to get the second part afterwards’ the captain of the Thor Heyerdahl thought.
‘When we are finished, the new station will be twice as large as the ISS. I wonder how many Fen owned trucks were necessary to carry all this stuff up to the space depot. If this mission does not succeed, it will be one of the most expensive failures in the history of spaceflight.’
Fenspace owned surface orbital transportation had made spaceflight a lot cheaper than a decade ago, but this expedition was still expensive as hell.
But pushed by the increasing oil and gas prices and the sometimes less than reliable sources for both the EU and Japan were looking hard for other energy sources.
The radio speakers went active again.
“Thor Heyerdahl, this is Darmstadt. You are green for leaving orbit, we expect you back in two months. Gute Reise!”
----
The Thor Heyerdahl felt crowded for the first time of her life. The ship had more room for the crew than any other hardtech spacecraft before, but with a full crew of ten people on a voyage that would take nearly a month it was not really that comfortable.
But the crew agreed with each other that it was better than any spacecraft they had used before, especially with the light gravity during the flight. No worrying about hovering hot water or dust, no need to discuss whats up and down when you meet, just like old Earth, only lighter.
Luckily ESA and JAXA had provided their ISVs with a sophisticated computer system which could also be used for entertainment. The fact that all four ISVs were within milliseconds communication distance of each other helped too, 40 people were more than enough to spent time during the flight. Everyone knew that things would get much more stressing as soon as they arrived in orbit around Saturn.
“It somehow feel strange” Captain Eric Hunt said, “building a space station more than a billion kilometers away from home. A few years ago we had to give the ISS away because it was too expensive without the US and now this.”
Sarah Meier chuckled. “Without the Fen owned surface to orbit transports we could never have done it. Or without this strange tech catalog they published. But who cares how we did it as long as we are DOING it. Its not good to leave most Earth based spaceflights to the military.”
“And the elevator might change the whole game again in a few years. A century old dream coming true, and we are around to see it.”
“I will believe it when we get the money for it, the whole project is still incredible expensive. But if our mission is a success, Brussels might pay for it. I just hope the US really got over all their crazy protests, the last thing we want is an armed US ship looking for us.”
Eric Hunt shook his head. “I don’t really worry about this, there are enough Fen up here who consider this their territory. If the US starts to protest against our project with more than diplomatic notes, we will have lots of voluntary ships to deal with them. That’s one of the reasons we are going to Saturn, the Warsies up there keep the neighborhood safe.”
Sarah suddenly grinned. “What do you think will they say back home when they discover the kind of help we organized for building the station?”
Eric chuckled.
“Its all in the reports of the ESA to Brussels. One of the guys showed me the page where it says ‘Costs for Fen support’. They never asked about it, maybe the amount of money was too low to be important.”
“I bet they will demand an explanation for it.”
“It’s not my problem” Eric replied and shrugged. “We will be far away from home, the guys at home will easily manage this. Its not that they would stop the mission anymore.”
----
A video stream activated, showing a small cockpit with a lot of screens and buttons. The camera showed two people, a men in an ESA coverall and a woman wearing a Fen spacesuit. On the edge of the screen a third seat is visible, another woman in ESA coverall is keeping an eye on the console in front of her.
“Good morning ladies and gentlemen, this is Maico Tange.
I am speaking today with Mr. Eric Hunt, captain of the spaceship Thor Heyerdahl. Mr. Hunt, how are you feeling now that you finally arrived in the orbit of Saturn ?”
Eric Hunt smiled.
“It is a great feeling coming here and enjoying this incredible look of Saturn and its rings. I mean, when I joined ESA, the thought about going to the Moon or to Mars was ridiculous. And now we are here in the Orbit around Saturn with 40 astronauts. That’s incredible!”
Maico nodded.
“Yes, of course. I don’t think any hardtech spaceship except the ISV Nobu Shirase during its flyby mission ever got that far. So what do Europe and Japan are doing that far from home?”
“We were sent to Saturn to setup a permanent station here. Both Europe and Japan are still looking for a clean energy source, we think that the same fusion technology used for the Thor Heyerdahl could also be the key to the energy problem.”
“So you are here to look for Helium-3” Maico replied, “that is quite a challenge without any involvement of Handwavium. Unless the restrictions for your civil space agencies on Earth have been lifted for this mission.”
“No, they have not been lifted. You are correct that this mission might be a greater challenge to ESA and JAXA than any before, but I am sure we can do it. We have all the basic parts with us to start with the station, and will get two additional supply runs in the next twelve months.”
Maico raised an eyebrow.
“That’s quite a lot of material, twelve hangars full of building materials. Tell me, where around Saturn will your new station be floating, I expect that quite a few of my viewers will be interested in watching you building it or visiting you later.”
“The station will be underground in the Saturn moon Pan, inside the rings of Saturn. Its the closest place to the planet where the station is protected from stellar radiation and meteor impacts.”
“Pan?”
“The closest moon of Saturn, a block of ice maybe 30 km in length. As soon as we arrive there and get the fusion reactor of the station up and running, we will begin to melt holes into the ice to put the station into. This will make extending the station later much easier than on an asteroid and still gives us a lot protection.”
“So that’s why all the catgirls are waiting here for you?”
The camera turned to a window of the Thor Heyerdahl for a moment, showing the large space station of Catgirl Industries floating in some distance. When it turned back, Eric Hunt is grinning.
“Oh, we just hired them for a bit support during the first setup phase of the station. It gives us a place to live while we are working on Pan and makes the whole mission a lot safer.”
“Of course,” Maico answered and turns towards the camera.
“So ESA and JAXA will be quite busy building their new ice station on Saturn in the coming year. This is Maico Tange, hope to see you on my next interview.”
Somewhere, a billion kilometers away from the Thor Heyerdahl a man switched of his TV set and grabbed his phone.
“Get me the Director General of ESA... yes, now... no, I don’t care if he is at mission control at the moment, get him to a phone... NOW!”
----
Three humans were sitting around a small table.
“Are you sure they arrived on Pan?”
“Yes, I am sure. The news report of Maico was accurate.”
“Why the hell did she not corner these bastards about the water theft?”
“Who knows, maybe she believes they will play by the rules? She is just short-witted, of course they will play by the rules for the first months.”
A girl with green hairs nodded. “First their space station, deep enough in the ice that we don’t know what they are doing there. Then the whole infrastructure to dive into Saturn, which accidentally looks like fast robotic jet fighters. Soon they will just start mining everything in the Saturn rings when nobody is looking at them, or maybe just arm the station!”
“It is time that someone tell this damned Danelaw nations that wrecking one planet is enough!”
“See if you can’t contact your friends from Green Fist, we might need the hardware support they promised to make sure our message is easy to understand!”
----
It took just a few days to move the small fleet of ships over the rings and into the orbit of Pan. Now they were carefully heading towards the small moon ahead, the spacestation of the catgirls still behind them.
Being careful was just normal. In the end going into any of the rings would not do as much as damage the rings, but utterly destroy a ship.
A few years ago the maneuver would have been suicide for any ESA vessel. Going over the ecliptic, fly over the rings of Saturn and then get into a gap a few hundreds of kilometers wide to meet a moon? Impossible!
But the fusion powered engines had made all previous mission plans of ESA and JAXA obsolete. Now it was just a matter of being patient enough.
And then there was the incredible view. Floating just a few hundred kilometers above flat surface larger than anything a human being could comprehend easily. Every planet, every moon, even the sun war a curved object with a horizon, but the rings just looked endless. An infinite ocean the Thor Heyerdahl would dive into soon.
Eric Hunt wasn’t sure if it looked magnificent or frightening.
All four ISV were floating just above the large ball of ice with the name Pan. The engines had been switched off and they were experiencing freefall for the first time in a month.
“Okay everybody, the boring time is over... you all know the plan, lets get the cargo out!”
A number of floodlights on the outer hull of the ISVs activated, bathing the icemoon in a white light. The crew began to open freight doors of their ships and soon a number of huge cylinders were moved out of the cargo bays by the large telescope arm of each ship.
While the rest of the crew were checking the status of their cargo, Eric and nine other astronauts were slowly moving over the surface of the moon. Landing on the moon would not be difficult, its surface gravity was nearly non-existent. But burrowing the station in the ice would be not that easy without being thrown into an orbit around the moon.
He carefully landed on the icy surface, careful not to loose his balance. The positioning system of the nearby spaceships guided him quickly to a featureless point on the ice where he put down the anchor he was carrying.
The anchors were a simple construction, three claws to temporarily attach it to the ground and chemical fuse that would heat it above the ice melting point and provide the gas pressure to push a two meter long pole into the ice. No electronics, no motors, just pure mechanics and chemistry.
Eric just had fixed his anchor to the ground and lit the fuse as he saw a movement next to him.
Just a few meters away, a small machine with a few blinking lights on the surface was floating, slowly circling him and the anchor. The machine looked up at him and wiggled happily back and forth, then turned to its examination of the anchor.
“I think we have a toy from the Fen on the moon” Eric announced through his intercom as he watched the drone, “can someone fire up the main radio and ask them about it?”
The machine suddenly looked up, shivering back and forth while Eric could hear an annoyed hissing in his helmets speaker.
“It understands our radio and its not amused about being called a toy” Eric added quickly, looking a little bit worried to the little machine in front of him. Was it dangerous?
“Mr. Hunt, I got someone at the space station, the say the little thing is an Exocomp. They’re going to send someone over to collect it later, you should just ignore it. If it interferes with your work, you should scold it!”
Eric shook his head and looked back to his visitor. “You heard it? If you interfere with our work, I have to start ranting.”
The Exocomp just nodded happily and continued his observation.
‘No wonder Fen are considered insane by some people. And its contagious too, I am already talking with a small machine directly out of a Scifi Movie’ Eric thought and got back to work.
----
Eric Hunt was laying on a couch, relaxing from the long hours of work on the ice moon. Somehow he had to thank this genius back home who decided to hire a Fen space station as a sleeping place for their mission.
They had made good progress today and planned to get the secondary fusion reactor of the station up and running tomorrow. But then the long hours of work had been over and they had moved away from the moon to the huge colorful space station.
One moment they were still floating in freefall, trying to get to the stations airlock without loosing the grip on the long cord... and the next moment gravity was increasing, allowing them to easily stand in the open airlock. Air had been streaming into the room and they had finally taken of their helmets.
A group of catgirls had welcomed them, showing them the closets where they could put in their life support backpacks and then lead them to the next module.
“We have built a module for your current stay, hope we forgot nothing in your rooms. If you notice something missing, just tell us and we will put it in while you are working on the moon.”
Eric smiled and thought about the short tour on their new ‘home’ for the next months.
Full Earth gravity...
A crew of catgirls and crazy robots to ask for help...
Rooms large enough to stretch yourself without knocking something over...
Hot showers for everyone!
Showers were normally something precious during space missions. It had been worst on the ISS, because both of the limited supply of water and the zero-g environment. At least the solar panels had delivered enough energy for heating.
The flight with the Thor Heyerdahl class ISVs had been better because of its constant acceleration and the unlimited energy. And on Pan they even would have lots of water, and a huge amount of space to use. At least after they got the necessary parts to increase the size of the station.
Maybe he should ask the catgirls what they payed for construction materials, getting unwaved steel would be perfect for their new station when the workshop was installed and running.
Eric smiled, maybe it was a good time to go looking for this kitchen the catgirls had talked about.
---
The work on the ice moon had begun again. Eric Hunt looked back one more time to the space station that was still floating above in the sky and then turned towards their working area.
“Okay, we all talked about it during the breakfast. Group 1, get the reactor online, we need the energy soon. Group 2, check the equipment for the tent, we need to set it up before we start digging. Group 3, you come with me and check the anchors from yesterday, after this we put in the rest of them for the tent!”
The three groups split up and Eric headed to the group of anchors he had used to fix one of the containers to the ground, carefully moving along the rope lines they had put between the anchors yesterday.
The first day of work had been crawling along slowly. Pan had surface gravity, but not much of it. It could hold a screwdriver on the ground if you put it there carefully, but one bad step and you were on a hour long trip over the moon. They had done all the work at the first day with zero gravity backpacks, which made any work a painfully slow process.
“Anchor four is still fixed, seems ESA delivered good hardware” someone said over the radio. Kevin was again a little bit faster with his zero-g skills than the rest of the crew.
Eric Hunt smiled and carefully checked his first anchor, which didn’t moved a bit. “Anchor one is fixed” he announced, and looked for the next one as someone called him.
“Mr. Hunt, it seems your little friend is back again!”
Eric looked around and instantly saw the small drone that hat watched him yesterday. Or maybe another one, he had learned the catgirls had more than one of them at the space station. ‘Talk with them like with an intelligent pet cat’ one of the catgirls had told him.
“Ah, there you are again” he said with a smile, “you know the deal... looking is okay, interfering where we are working is not.”
The Exocomp carefully pressed himself against Eric’s suit and purred over the radio, then went back a few meters and hovered close by, following Eric as he moved to the next anchor. If everything would go by plan, they would be ready with the anchors for the tent tomorrow evening.
“Mr. Hunt, I cannot find one of the spare anchors. I am sure we had all of them accounted for yesterday, but one of them is missing!”
‘So much for the plan’ Eric thought.
----
Somewhere else.
“Where the hell you have been? Just taking the truck and leaving for nearly a week is not what we agreed upon. Get in quickly!”
“Sorry, you two were away and I had to act quickly.”
“What do you mean, quickly?”
“I got a reply from my friends of Green Fist. They were worried about all the things we reported and they said they might have something for us. Directly from the lab of an unmentioned Mad.”
“And you had to take the truck because... ?”
“Because they said it was a little bit larger, the perfect tool to deliver our message. You two have to see it yourself!”
All three of them quickly moved to the trucks cargo trailer.
“Wow! Look at the size of that thing!”
“What the hell is this monster?”
“This my friends is our packet delivery service. A self-contained mass accelerator that will allow us to hit the European bastards with an awesome punch from far away.”
“How far away? I mean, they have all this catgirls buzzing around, we don’t want to get caught five seconds after delivering our message.”
“Far enough, the catgirls don’t have a lot of long range ships to find us. We sneak in, deploy and program the weapon. After a few hours of calibration, it will fire.”
“Are you sure it will even hit them?”
“It has to hit a fucking Moon! Of course it will hit the target.”
“If you say so.”
----
Somewhere, in an empty supply modules on Jenga was a strange meeting happening. The module was new and would not be used by the catgirl inhabitants for quite some time. There was still some infrastructure of the module missing, Serina had said the Exocomps had too many other things in mind at the moment to finish it.
But in one corner of the module, behind a few solid steel plates which would cover the floor in the coming months a small group of Exocomps was floating around a long pipe... one with an ESA logo on it.
Eight Exocomps were rushing up and down, showering the device with low powered sensor beams from all kind of angles, shivering in excitement from time to time.
New tech!
New tech they hadn’t seen before!
New tech without Handwavium!
A puzzle.
A new puzzle!
The had to solve it!
The catgirls had told them that their guests did not wanted them to help with their work, and that they should not interfere with it. It was a selfish thing to keep the work for themselves, but there were not all that bad. And luckily they stopped working at some time, which had given the group the possibility to get this artifact without interfering with their work!
After a few hours, they were finished with all their measurements and moved their work to a small and secret playground on the Grid. They had learned over the years from the catgirls that it was quite fun to work with simulations.
You could only topple a large mountain of Christmas packages once, but you could do it as often and as spectacular as you liked on the Grid.
Quickly a virtual copy of the sensor data they had gathered appeared in front of their virtual avatars. The Exocomps activated a physics simulation and added water as the ground.
Then they watched the staff sinking in the waves of their simulated ocean.
Something wasn’t right.
Cold... much colder... much much colder!
The simulation started anew, this time with a ground of ice below the staff. It stood on its tiny legs, until one of the Exocomps pushed the button at the top, activating the chemical mix inside.
Ice began to melt... and after a moment the simulated staff fell to the side.
The Exocomps were puzzled, viewing their sensor readings of the astronauts work on the moon again. Just as they decided to start another simulation run, Cortana's avatar suddenly appeared over them.
“What the hell is going on here” Cortana thundered.
The Exocomps were shocked, one of them quickly vanished the simulated artifact and tried to look unsuspicious.
“Do not think I have not seen what you did here. How did you get such a good reading on this anchors... wait a moment, you did it?”
Cortana began to trace the connection of the Exocomp back, which quickly lead her into a very new module. It took her a moment to a few cameras and upload the firmware for them.
“How could you? You have stolen from our guests!”
That confused the Exocomps for a moment. Hadn’t the guests said that this were the place for their spare parts? How could borrowing a spare part be wrong?
Cortana sighed about the communication between the little drones.
“You will give it back immediately, and you will do it in person. If they ban ALL of your kind from their working area, it will be your fault.”
Their brothers might be banned from the icy moon too? Suddenly the Exocomps were a bit worried.
----
“... as expected in my last progress report, the work on Pan is continuing smoothly. Since the tent is up we are able to liquefy ice and refreeze it on the surface, so we can get the necessary holes for the first station modules.
Contacts with the Fen pet drones is still alternating between annoying, funny or useful. While they are hanging around the construction site to watch us, they are always eager to carry some tools for us or capture things and even two of my crew, who lost ground contact and were flying away from Pan.
When the second part of our equipment arrives from Nova Paris, we will have already burrowed the first modules in the ice. I expect to finish phase two of the project with little or no delay and continue installing the second batch of modules.”
Eric Hunt looked over his progress report for the beancounters at Earth for a last time. Even here, a billion kilometers away from Earth it was impossible to escape the paperwork completely.
He sometimes wondered how the Fen would have built this station, most likely it would have been something very crazy. Or maybe a floating city like in Star Wars above the clouds of Saturn.
He sighed, whatever it would have been, it would have got artificial gravity of course. Thinking about this for a moment, he opened the document again.
“I would also like to forward the request of multiple crew members to allow the addition of a waved gravity generator to some of the modules. I talked with several Fen over the last week, according to their knowledge it should be trivial to add an electrical powered one to a module.
As part of the ‘Environmental Systems’ it would most likely be completely free of strange side effects. One generator per module would also allow us to regulate the gravity in each module on its own, which is necessary for some of the production technology we want to install.”
He nodded to himself and pressed the ‘send mail’ button, then stand up and left his apartment to join his crew members in the canteen.
“Ah Eric, good to see you... we had been expecting you meeting us here a few hours ago, that much paperwork left?”
Eric nodded. “I always thought that being an astronaut would allow you to leave all this paperwork back on Earth, but the damned bureaucrats have got an upgrade for their procedures.”
Everyone on the table chuckled.
“And yes, I asked them about the gravity generator. Most likely they will declare me insane and unfit for command. But maybe they will see the benefits of the idea. Transfering from this station to some hole in an ice moon with practical zero gravity doesn’t sound great.”
Sarah sighed. “Don’t forget to mention the nice cafeteria here, and the wonderful showers they have installed in our rooms. I asked one of the catgirls about the showers, did you knew that they don’t even used Handwavium for them, except for some filtration module in the bottom?”
“What do you want to say” Eric asked suspiciously.
“Oh, we have the job to build up the station, but we are also allowed to expand it later if necessary. The only restriction we currently face is that Handwavium is not allowed inside the station.”
“Yes, we all know that...”
“What's about putting one additional box of steel into the ice, one that is NOT part of the station? If its not part of the station, we might get away with ignoring some of the rules.”
Eric shook his head. “Everything we build with the materials we have is part of the station. I am sorry, but this is not going to work.”
Sarah just grinned.
“Oh, I think I know a few engineers who might be willing to build us an additional module for the moon. Without using up ESA or JAXA supplied materials, but with artificial gravity and hot showers!”
“They will just shoot us when we get back to Earth” Eric just murmured, trying to ignore the discussion Sarah just started at the table.
----
While the work on Pan went ahead as planned for the next days, they were not the only group planning for the future of the Saturn moon.
Somewhere in the darkness, light seconds away from the huge ringed planet called Saturn was a black platform, placed there by an unremarkable waved truck. After hours of calibrating its orientation through analysis of incoming light from stars and planets, the computer on the platform finished its preparation phase and switched to a second set of commands.
The platform suddenly emitted a flash of green light as it dumped energy from its waved capacitors into the weapon array. Within the blink of an eye, a small metallic projectile was accelerated to an incredible speed. Moments later the cooling system failed and the computer shortcutted its own capacitors, which instantly blew the whole platform into tiny pieces. But its payload was already racing towards its target.
For nearly an hour its flight wasn’t noticed by anyone.
Seconds before the projectile hit it target, it was finally seen. A group of Exocomps had chased a small block of ice of the rings a few hundred kilometers away from Jenga and one of them recognized the moving dot on its infrared camera.
‘TOY! Lets catch it!’, the small drone thought and its companions quickly reoriented to look for their new prey. They quickly estimated the distance, only to be disappointed that the little dot on their optics was that far away.
‘Oh, too far away’ they thought sad, ‘maybe a friend can catch it?’
Then they all suddenly flinched.
Whatever it was, it was fast... very fast. And it was going to hit home!
Their shock hit Serinas consciousness a few milliseconds later. While her mind ran distributed on all the Exocomps, she normally did not payed that much attention to most of her little children.
But now most of the Exocomps on Jenga suddenly froze for a moment as a priority alert raced through Serinas mind, forcing her subjective time perception to slow down. It took just a look through all of her eyes outside the station to verify the course and speed of the incoming threat.
She ignored a curious word from Cortana, Jenga’s other AI was still working in normal time.
Jengas radar emitter began to charge up, but it would take a few milliseconds until the first pulse. A second command woke up the stations point defense laser guns, but Serina could already see that most of the turrets would take too long to get out of their parking position.
“What the hell is going on” Cortana asked, finally getting in sync with Serina just as the first radar pulses reflected back from the incoming projectile.
“We have a kinetic impactor incoming for the working site on the moon” she replied focused, “small projectile, but moving at more than a percentage of the speed of light. I think we will get off one shot at it.”
The eyes of Cortana's Grid avatar widened. “Do we have something to intercept it?”
“No we don’t, it was so small I saw it just half a second ago. Two hundred milliseconds until I will shoot it with one of our lasers, the others are in the wrong position. Not enough time to warn anyone.”
Cortana frowned.
“Make sure everyone is ready for a rescue mission, I hope the Daneverse astronauts will survive.”
The timer ticked down to zero and a blue pulse of light raced outwards and hit the incoming projectile, vaporizing most of it instantly. Normally that would have neutralized any projectile easily.
But the projectile was only a fraction of a seconds away from hitting its target, so the superheated metal vapor had no time to dissipate. A whole section of Pan’s surface flashed bright white as the icy surface was vaporized.
In a certain way, the laser had turned a sniper weapon into a shotgun. But a shotgun was still a lethal weapon.
I have been working on this story for nearly a year, hitting multiple writer blocks and turning towards other stories in the meantime. But finally I have the majority of the story out. Hope its still interesting to read, tell me what you think.
The story is beginning in Summer 2017, so this is before CI had more than a few scraps of the Normandy started.
#################
Two men were sitting on a console in the large control room of ESA in Darmstadt.
“You think we will be able do this?”
“Yes, I think so. As long as the governments back in Brussels don’t do something stupid, we will go through the mission as planned.”
“Do you think the US will protest again?”
“No, they did not protest that much when we finished the fourth ISV.”
“Is everything assembled at our depot?”
“Yes, the last checks were completed three days ago. All astronauts have been send up and everyone is just waiting for the ‘go’ signal.”
----
In the year 2016 the growing fleet of Interplanetary Space Vehicles of ESA and JAXA had been sent on several smaller missions to Venus and the Belt. The longest mission had been the voyage of the ISV Nobu Shirase around Saturn. ESA had called it an endurance test and dropped a number of scientific satellites around the planet, but called the ISV back home soon after.
But after this none of the spaceships had left ESAs space depot again. Some people said ESA and JAXA were tired with senseless flying around. Others said, the EU governments were not willing to pay for it anymore.
But the second step on ESAs “10 year plan to conquer Brussels” began exactly as the last step. In the middle of a storm of reporters, camera flashes flickering off like lightning without thunder.
ESAs press speaker and the representative of JAXA were grinning into the cameras, it was time to hit the naysayer with another club on the head. And he would hit them hard!
“Welcome ladies and gentlemen.” he started with a smile.
“In the last six months since our flyby mission around Saturn there have been voices that said the cooperation between ESA and JAXA has burned out. That we are without a goal to reach. Today you are here to learn that nothing could be further from the truth.”
He looked to his Japanese colleague, which continued.
“When the Thor Heyerdahl came back from Mars, we had proven that the solar system is still open for exploration, even without Handwavium. But as important as this, we also showed everyone the potential of Fusion reactor JAXA provided for the spaceship. After we returned several governments approached our consortium to see how fast we could build a reactor to supply electrical power to them. There was only one problem. The supply of Helium-3!”
Several reporters nodded. The debate about Nuclear Fusion had heated up since the first prototype of the Honda Fusion Reactor two years ago, but died down soon after. The problem was that to get a pure aneutronic fusion reaction, you had to use pure Helium-3 as fuel. Digging over thousands of squaremiles on the Moon to mine it was out of question, so the only source were some Fen who did the insane job to dive into Jupiter to get it.
And nobody wanted to make their power generation totally dependent on the goodwill of a few Fen.
“We all know the discussions about Lunar sources of Helium-3, but to say it again, it will not happen. The Moon is not empty anymore, and the amount of Helium-3 in the dust is just too small.”
The ESA press speaker nodded to his colleague.
“12 months ago ESA and JAXA contacted their governments for a proposal to fix this problem. Since then, we have shipped hundreds of tons of steel and ceramic up to our orbital depot, together with the finest hightech our countries can provide. A group of forty astronauts are waiting in orbit to begin the largest space mission Europe and Japan have ever done before.”
The room was filled with quiet murmurs now while everyone was trying to guess what was going on.
“This evening, the Thor Heyerdahl, the Leif Erickson, the Nobu Shirase and the Ferdinand Magellan will depart from our depot and will be heading for Saturn. They will be carrying the first pieces of equipment to set up a permanent space station there, where some of the brightest engineers of our countries will live. If everything will go according to plan, we will deliver the first batch of Helium-3 within 24 months.”
“Why Saturn? Isn’t this awful far away?” one of the reporters asked.
“There are three places where one could mine Helium-3 in the solar system if you don’t want to dig through millions of tons of lunar rocks. Jupiter, Saturn or Uranus.
Uranus is too far away for our current ISVs, we cannot get there and back without refueling, which make missions much more dangerous.
Jupiter is a lot closer than Saturn, but it has also a much higher mass, which makes it harder to get into a low orbit and back out of it.
The decision to build the station around Saturn was made as a compromise between distance and depth of the gravity well. The fact that one of the larger Fen factions have their capitol there makes it a safer neighborhood too.”
----
“Darmstadt Control, this is the Thor Heyerdahl. Mission checks are done, all four ships are reporting condition green, we are ready for the first part of the mission.”
“Thor Heyerdahl, here is Darmstadt Control. Mission countdown restarted at T minus 15 minutes, prepare for launch sequence.”
After the flight of the Thor Heyerdahl ESA and JAXA had decided to change the design of their new space ships. Armed with the data gathered during the long flight, several small changes had been made in the engine section of the ship. Simultaneously they had cut the Thor Heyerdahl into four parts, connected by large docking rings.
As her sister ships, the Heyerdahl now were made up by an front crew section and an aft engine section. Depending on the mission different cargo or carrier modules could be placed between crew and engine section, together with one or multiple modules for carrying reaction mass.
All four ISVs had been equipped with a large cargo and a single reaction mass module, which allowed each of the ISVs to transport a total of one hundred metric tons of cargo to Saturn. And each of them was filled with equipment up to the limit.
‘And that’s just the first part of the cargo. We will have to come back to get the second part afterwards’ the captain of the Thor Heyerdahl thought.
‘When we are finished, the new station will be twice as large as the ISS. I wonder how many Fen owned trucks were necessary to carry all this stuff up to the space depot. If this mission does not succeed, it will be one of the most expensive failures in the history of spaceflight.’
Fenspace owned surface orbital transportation had made spaceflight a lot cheaper than a decade ago, but this expedition was still expensive as hell.
But pushed by the increasing oil and gas prices and the sometimes less than reliable sources for both the EU and Japan were looking hard for other energy sources.
The radio speakers went active again.
“Thor Heyerdahl, this is Darmstadt. You are green for leaving orbit, we expect you back in two months. Gute Reise!”
----
The Thor Heyerdahl felt crowded for the first time of her life. The ship had more room for the crew than any other hardtech spacecraft before, but with a full crew of ten people on a voyage that would take nearly a month it was not really that comfortable.
But the crew agreed with each other that it was better than any spacecraft they had used before, especially with the light gravity during the flight. No worrying about hovering hot water or dust, no need to discuss whats up and down when you meet, just like old Earth, only lighter.
Luckily ESA and JAXA had provided their ISVs with a sophisticated computer system which could also be used for entertainment. The fact that all four ISVs were within milliseconds communication distance of each other helped too, 40 people were more than enough to spent time during the flight. Everyone knew that things would get much more stressing as soon as they arrived in orbit around Saturn.
“It somehow feel strange” Captain Eric Hunt said, “building a space station more than a billion kilometers away from home. A few years ago we had to give the ISS away because it was too expensive without the US and now this.”
Sarah Meier chuckled. “Without the Fen owned surface to orbit transports we could never have done it. Or without this strange tech catalog they published. But who cares how we did it as long as we are DOING it. Its not good to leave most Earth based spaceflights to the military.”
“And the elevator might change the whole game again in a few years. A century old dream coming true, and we are around to see it.”
“I will believe it when we get the money for it, the whole project is still incredible expensive. But if our mission is a success, Brussels might pay for it. I just hope the US really got over all their crazy protests, the last thing we want is an armed US ship looking for us.”
Eric Hunt shook his head. “I don’t really worry about this, there are enough Fen up here who consider this their territory. If the US starts to protest against our project with more than diplomatic notes, we will have lots of voluntary ships to deal with them. That’s one of the reasons we are going to Saturn, the Warsies up there keep the neighborhood safe.”
Sarah suddenly grinned. “What do you think will they say back home when they discover the kind of help we organized for building the station?”
Eric chuckled.
“Its all in the reports of the ESA to Brussels. One of the guys showed me the page where it says ‘Costs for Fen support’. They never asked about it, maybe the amount of money was too low to be important.”
“I bet they will demand an explanation for it.”
“It’s not my problem” Eric replied and shrugged. “We will be far away from home, the guys at home will easily manage this. Its not that they would stop the mission anymore.”
----
A video stream activated, showing a small cockpit with a lot of screens and buttons. The camera showed two people, a men in an ESA coverall and a woman wearing a Fen spacesuit. On the edge of the screen a third seat is visible, another woman in ESA coverall is keeping an eye on the console in front of her.
“Good morning ladies and gentlemen, this is Maico Tange.
I am speaking today with Mr. Eric Hunt, captain of the spaceship Thor Heyerdahl. Mr. Hunt, how are you feeling now that you finally arrived in the orbit of Saturn ?”
Eric Hunt smiled.
“It is a great feeling coming here and enjoying this incredible look of Saturn and its rings. I mean, when I joined ESA, the thought about going to the Moon or to Mars was ridiculous. And now we are here in the Orbit around Saturn with 40 astronauts. That’s incredible!”
Maico nodded.
“Yes, of course. I don’t think any hardtech spaceship except the ISV Nobu Shirase during its flyby mission ever got that far. So what do Europe and Japan are doing that far from home?”
“We were sent to Saturn to setup a permanent station here. Both Europe and Japan are still looking for a clean energy source, we think that the same fusion technology used for the Thor Heyerdahl could also be the key to the energy problem.”
“So you are here to look for Helium-3” Maico replied, “that is quite a challenge without any involvement of Handwavium. Unless the restrictions for your civil space agencies on Earth have been lifted for this mission.”
“No, they have not been lifted. You are correct that this mission might be a greater challenge to ESA and JAXA than any before, but I am sure we can do it. We have all the basic parts with us to start with the station, and will get two additional supply runs in the next twelve months.”
Maico raised an eyebrow.
“That’s quite a lot of material, twelve hangars full of building materials. Tell me, where around Saturn will your new station be floating, I expect that quite a few of my viewers will be interested in watching you building it or visiting you later.”
“The station will be underground in the Saturn moon Pan, inside the rings of Saturn. Its the closest place to the planet where the station is protected from stellar radiation and meteor impacts.”
“Pan?”
“The closest moon of Saturn, a block of ice maybe 30 km in length. As soon as we arrive there and get the fusion reactor of the station up and running, we will begin to melt holes into the ice to put the station into. This will make extending the station later much easier than on an asteroid and still gives us a lot protection.”
“So that’s why all the catgirls are waiting here for you?”
The camera turned to a window of the Thor Heyerdahl for a moment, showing the large space station of Catgirl Industries floating in some distance. When it turned back, Eric Hunt is grinning.
“Oh, we just hired them for a bit support during the first setup phase of the station. It gives us a place to live while we are working on Pan and makes the whole mission a lot safer.”
“Of course,” Maico answered and turns towards the camera.
“So ESA and JAXA will be quite busy building their new ice station on Saturn in the coming year. This is Maico Tange, hope to see you on my next interview.”
Somewhere, a billion kilometers away from the Thor Heyerdahl a man switched of his TV set and grabbed his phone.
“Get me the Director General of ESA... yes, now... no, I don’t care if he is at mission control at the moment, get him to a phone... NOW!”
----
Three humans were sitting around a small table.
“Are you sure they arrived on Pan?”
“Yes, I am sure. The news report of Maico was accurate.”
“Why the hell did she not corner these bastards about the water theft?”
“Who knows, maybe she believes they will play by the rules? She is just short-witted, of course they will play by the rules for the first months.”
A girl with green hairs nodded. “First their space station, deep enough in the ice that we don’t know what they are doing there. Then the whole infrastructure to dive into Saturn, which accidentally looks like fast robotic jet fighters. Soon they will just start mining everything in the Saturn rings when nobody is looking at them, or maybe just arm the station!”
“It is time that someone tell this damned Danelaw nations that wrecking one planet is enough!”
“See if you can’t contact your friends from Green Fist, we might need the hardware support they promised to make sure our message is easy to understand!”
----
It took just a few days to move the small fleet of ships over the rings and into the orbit of Pan. Now they were carefully heading towards the small moon ahead, the spacestation of the catgirls still behind them.
Being careful was just normal. In the end going into any of the rings would not do as much as damage the rings, but utterly destroy a ship.
A few years ago the maneuver would have been suicide for any ESA vessel. Going over the ecliptic, fly over the rings of Saturn and then get into a gap a few hundreds of kilometers wide to meet a moon? Impossible!
But the fusion powered engines had made all previous mission plans of ESA and JAXA obsolete. Now it was just a matter of being patient enough.
And then there was the incredible view. Floating just a few hundred kilometers above flat surface larger than anything a human being could comprehend easily. Every planet, every moon, even the sun war a curved object with a horizon, but the rings just looked endless. An infinite ocean the Thor Heyerdahl would dive into soon.
Eric Hunt wasn’t sure if it looked magnificent or frightening.
All four ISV were floating just above the large ball of ice with the name Pan. The engines had been switched off and they were experiencing freefall for the first time in a month.
“Okay everybody, the boring time is over... you all know the plan, lets get the cargo out!”
A number of floodlights on the outer hull of the ISVs activated, bathing the icemoon in a white light. The crew began to open freight doors of their ships and soon a number of huge cylinders were moved out of the cargo bays by the large telescope arm of each ship.
While the rest of the crew were checking the status of their cargo, Eric and nine other astronauts were slowly moving over the surface of the moon. Landing on the moon would not be difficult, its surface gravity was nearly non-existent. But burrowing the station in the ice would be not that easy without being thrown into an orbit around the moon.
He carefully landed on the icy surface, careful not to loose his balance. The positioning system of the nearby spaceships guided him quickly to a featureless point on the ice where he put down the anchor he was carrying.
The anchors were a simple construction, three claws to temporarily attach it to the ground and chemical fuse that would heat it above the ice melting point and provide the gas pressure to push a two meter long pole into the ice. No electronics, no motors, just pure mechanics and chemistry.
Eric just had fixed his anchor to the ground and lit the fuse as he saw a movement next to him.
Just a few meters away, a small machine with a few blinking lights on the surface was floating, slowly circling him and the anchor. The machine looked up at him and wiggled happily back and forth, then turned to its examination of the anchor.
“I think we have a toy from the Fen on the moon” Eric announced through his intercom as he watched the drone, “can someone fire up the main radio and ask them about it?”
The machine suddenly looked up, shivering back and forth while Eric could hear an annoyed hissing in his helmets speaker.
“It understands our radio and its not amused about being called a toy” Eric added quickly, looking a little bit worried to the little machine in front of him. Was it dangerous?
“Mr. Hunt, I got someone at the space station, the say the little thing is an Exocomp. They’re going to send someone over to collect it later, you should just ignore it. If it interferes with your work, you should scold it!”
Eric shook his head and looked back to his visitor. “You heard it? If you interfere with our work, I have to start ranting.”
The Exocomp just nodded happily and continued his observation.
‘No wonder Fen are considered insane by some people. And its contagious too, I am already talking with a small machine directly out of a Scifi Movie’ Eric thought and got back to work.
----
Eric Hunt was laying on a couch, relaxing from the long hours of work on the ice moon. Somehow he had to thank this genius back home who decided to hire a Fen space station as a sleeping place for their mission.
They had made good progress today and planned to get the secondary fusion reactor of the station up and running tomorrow. But then the long hours of work had been over and they had moved away from the moon to the huge colorful space station.
One moment they were still floating in freefall, trying to get to the stations airlock without loosing the grip on the long cord... and the next moment gravity was increasing, allowing them to easily stand in the open airlock. Air had been streaming into the room and they had finally taken of their helmets.
A group of catgirls had welcomed them, showing them the closets where they could put in their life support backpacks and then lead them to the next module.
“We have built a module for your current stay, hope we forgot nothing in your rooms. If you notice something missing, just tell us and we will put it in while you are working on the moon.”
Eric smiled and thought about the short tour on their new ‘home’ for the next months.
Full Earth gravity...
A crew of catgirls and crazy robots to ask for help...
Rooms large enough to stretch yourself without knocking something over...
Hot showers for everyone!
Showers were normally something precious during space missions. It had been worst on the ISS, because both of the limited supply of water and the zero-g environment. At least the solar panels had delivered enough energy for heating.
The flight with the Thor Heyerdahl class ISVs had been better because of its constant acceleration and the unlimited energy. And on Pan they even would have lots of water, and a huge amount of space to use. At least after they got the necessary parts to increase the size of the station.
Maybe he should ask the catgirls what they payed for construction materials, getting unwaved steel would be perfect for their new station when the workshop was installed and running.
Eric smiled, maybe it was a good time to go looking for this kitchen the catgirls had talked about.
---
The work on the ice moon had begun again. Eric Hunt looked back one more time to the space station that was still floating above in the sky and then turned towards their working area.
“Okay, we all talked about it during the breakfast. Group 1, get the reactor online, we need the energy soon. Group 2, check the equipment for the tent, we need to set it up before we start digging. Group 3, you come with me and check the anchors from yesterday, after this we put in the rest of them for the tent!”
The three groups split up and Eric headed to the group of anchors he had used to fix one of the containers to the ground, carefully moving along the rope lines they had put between the anchors yesterday.
The first day of work had been crawling along slowly. Pan had surface gravity, but not much of it. It could hold a screwdriver on the ground if you put it there carefully, but one bad step and you were on a hour long trip over the moon. They had done all the work at the first day with zero gravity backpacks, which made any work a painfully slow process.
“Anchor four is still fixed, seems ESA delivered good hardware” someone said over the radio. Kevin was again a little bit faster with his zero-g skills than the rest of the crew.
Eric Hunt smiled and carefully checked his first anchor, which didn’t moved a bit. “Anchor one is fixed” he announced, and looked for the next one as someone called him.
“Mr. Hunt, it seems your little friend is back again!”
Eric looked around and instantly saw the small drone that hat watched him yesterday. Or maybe another one, he had learned the catgirls had more than one of them at the space station. ‘Talk with them like with an intelligent pet cat’ one of the catgirls had told him.
“Ah, there you are again” he said with a smile, “you know the deal... looking is okay, interfering where we are working is not.”
The Exocomp carefully pressed himself against Eric’s suit and purred over the radio, then went back a few meters and hovered close by, following Eric as he moved to the next anchor. If everything would go by plan, they would be ready with the anchors for the tent tomorrow evening.
“Mr. Hunt, I cannot find one of the spare anchors. I am sure we had all of them accounted for yesterday, but one of them is missing!”
‘So much for the plan’ Eric thought.
----
Somewhere else.
“Where the hell you have been? Just taking the truck and leaving for nearly a week is not what we agreed upon. Get in quickly!”
“Sorry, you two were away and I had to act quickly.”
“What do you mean, quickly?”
“I got a reply from my friends of Green Fist. They were worried about all the things we reported and they said they might have something for us. Directly from the lab of an unmentioned Mad.”
“And you had to take the truck because... ?”
“Because they said it was a little bit larger, the perfect tool to deliver our message. You two have to see it yourself!”
All three of them quickly moved to the trucks cargo trailer.
“Wow! Look at the size of that thing!”
“What the hell is this monster?”
“This my friends is our packet delivery service. A self-contained mass accelerator that will allow us to hit the European bastards with an awesome punch from far away.”
“How far away? I mean, they have all this catgirls buzzing around, we don’t want to get caught five seconds after delivering our message.”
“Far enough, the catgirls don’t have a lot of long range ships to find us. We sneak in, deploy and program the weapon. After a few hours of calibration, it will fire.”
“Are you sure it will even hit them?”
“It has to hit a fucking Moon! Of course it will hit the target.”
“If you say so.”
----
Somewhere, in an empty supply modules on Jenga was a strange meeting happening. The module was new and would not be used by the catgirl inhabitants for quite some time. There was still some infrastructure of the module missing, Serina had said the Exocomps had too many other things in mind at the moment to finish it.
But in one corner of the module, behind a few solid steel plates which would cover the floor in the coming months a small group of Exocomps was floating around a long pipe... one with an ESA logo on it.
Eight Exocomps were rushing up and down, showering the device with low powered sensor beams from all kind of angles, shivering in excitement from time to time.
New tech!
New tech they hadn’t seen before!
New tech without Handwavium!
A puzzle.
A new puzzle!
The had to solve it!
The catgirls had told them that their guests did not wanted them to help with their work, and that they should not interfere with it. It was a selfish thing to keep the work for themselves, but there were not all that bad. And luckily they stopped working at some time, which had given the group the possibility to get this artifact without interfering with their work!
After a few hours, they were finished with all their measurements and moved their work to a small and secret playground on the Grid. They had learned over the years from the catgirls that it was quite fun to work with simulations.
You could only topple a large mountain of Christmas packages once, but you could do it as often and as spectacular as you liked on the Grid.
Quickly a virtual copy of the sensor data they had gathered appeared in front of their virtual avatars. The Exocomps activated a physics simulation and added water as the ground.
Then they watched the staff sinking in the waves of their simulated ocean.
Something wasn’t right.
Cold... much colder... much much colder!
The simulation started anew, this time with a ground of ice below the staff. It stood on its tiny legs, until one of the Exocomps pushed the button at the top, activating the chemical mix inside.
Ice began to melt... and after a moment the simulated staff fell to the side.
The Exocomps were puzzled, viewing their sensor readings of the astronauts work on the moon again. Just as they decided to start another simulation run, Cortana's avatar suddenly appeared over them.
“What the hell is going on here” Cortana thundered.
The Exocomps were shocked, one of them quickly vanished the simulated artifact and tried to look unsuspicious.
“Do not think I have not seen what you did here. How did you get such a good reading on this anchors... wait a moment, you did it?”
Cortana began to trace the connection of the Exocomp back, which quickly lead her into a very new module. It took her a moment to a few cameras and upload the firmware for them.
“How could you? You have stolen from our guests!”
That confused the Exocomps for a moment. Hadn’t the guests said that this were the place for their spare parts? How could borrowing a spare part be wrong?
Cortana sighed about the communication between the little drones.
“You will give it back immediately, and you will do it in person. If they ban ALL of your kind from their working area, it will be your fault.”
Their brothers might be banned from the icy moon too? Suddenly the Exocomps were a bit worried.
----
“... as expected in my last progress report, the work on Pan is continuing smoothly. Since the tent is up we are able to liquefy ice and refreeze it on the surface, so we can get the necessary holes for the first station modules.
Contacts with the Fen pet drones is still alternating between annoying, funny or useful. While they are hanging around the construction site to watch us, they are always eager to carry some tools for us or capture things and even two of my crew, who lost ground contact and were flying away from Pan.
When the second part of our equipment arrives from Nova Paris, we will have already burrowed the first modules in the ice. I expect to finish phase two of the project with little or no delay and continue installing the second batch of modules.”
Eric Hunt looked over his progress report for the beancounters at Earth for a last time. Even here, a billion kilometers away from Earth it was impossible to escape the paperwork completely.
He sometimes wondered how the Fen would have built this station, most likely it would have been something very crazy. Or maybe a floating city like in Star Wars above the clouds of Saturn.
He sighed, whatever it would have been, it would have got artificial gravity of course. Thinking about this for a moment, he opened the document again.
“I would also like to forward the request of multiple crew members to allow the addition of a waved gravity generator to some of the modules. I talked with several Fen over the last week, according to their knowledge it should be trivial to add an electrical powered one to a module.
As part of the ‘Environmental Systems’ it would most likely be completely free of strange side effects. One generator per module would also allow us to regulate the gravity in each module on its own, which is necessary for some of the production technology we want to install.”
He nodded to himself and pressed the ‘send mail’ button, then stand up and left his apartment to join his crew members in the canteen.
“Ah Eric, good to see you... we had been expecting you meeting us here a few hours ago, that much paperwork left?”
Eric nodded. “I always thought that being an astronaut would allow you to leave all this paperwork back on Earth, but the damned bureaucrats have got an upgrade for their procedures.”
Everyone on the table chuckled.
“And yes, I asked them about the gravity generator. Most likely they will declare me insane and unfit for command. But maybe they will see the benefits of the idea. Transfering from this station to some hole in an ice moon with practical zero gravity doesn’t sound great.”
Sarah sighed. “Don’t forget to mention the nice cafeteria here, and the wonderful showers they have installed in our rooms. I asked one of the catgirls about the showers, did you knew that they don’t even used Handwavium for them, except for some filtration module in the bottom?”
“What do you want to say” Eric asked suspiciously.
“Oh, we have the job to build up the station, but we are also allowed to expand it later if necessary. The only restriction we currently face is that Handwavium is not allowed inside the station.”
“Yes, we all know that...”
“What's about putting one additional box of steel into the ice, one that is NOT part of the station? If its not part of the station, we might get away with ignoring some of the rules.”
Eric shook his head. “Everything we build with the materials we have is part of the station. I am sorry, but this is not going to work.”
Sarah just grinned.
“Oh, I think I know a few engineers who might be willing to build us an additional module for the moon. Without using up ESA or JAXA supplied materials, but with artificial gravity and hot showers!”
“They will just shoot us when we get back to Earth” Eric just murmured, trying to ignore the discussion Sarah just started at the table.
----
While the work on Pan went ahead as planned for the next days, they were not the only group planning for the future of the Saturn moon.
Somewhere in the darkness, light seconds away from the huge ringed planet called Saturn was a black platform, placed there by an unremarkable waved truck. After hours of calibrating its orientation through analysis of incoming light from stars and planets, the computer on the platform finished its preparation phase and switched to a second set of commands.
The platform suddenly emitted a flash of green light as it dumped energy from its waved capacitors into the weapon array. Within the blink of an eye, a small metallic projectile was accelerated to an incredible speed. Moments later the cooling system failed and the computer shortcutted its own capacitors, which instantly blew the whole platform into tiny pieces. But its payload was already racing towards its target.
For nearly an hour its flight wasn’t noticed by anyone.
Seconds before the projectile hit it target, it was finally seen. A group of Exocomps had chased a small block of ice of the rings a few hundred kilometers away from Jenga and one of them recognized the moving dot on its infrared camera.
‘TOY! Lets catch it!’, the small drone thought and its companions quickly reoriented to look for their new prey. They quickly estimated the distance, only to be disappointed that the little dot on their optics was that far away.
‘Oh, too far away’ they thought sad, ‘maybe a friend can catch it?’
Then they all suddenly flinched.
Whatever it was, it was fast... very fast. And it was going to hit home!
Their shock hit Serinas consciousness a few milliseconds later. While her mind ran distributed on all the Exocomps, she normally did not payed that much attention to most of her little children.
But now most of the Exocomps on Jenga suddenly froze for a moment as a priority alert raced through Serinas mind, forcing her subjective time perception to slow down. It took just a look through all of her eyes outside the station to verify the course and speed of the incoming threat.
She ignored a curious word from Cortana, Jenga’s other AI was still working in normal time.
Jengas radar emitter began to charge up, but it would take a few milliseconds until the first pulse. A second command woke up the stations point defense laser guns, but Serina could already see that most of the turrets would take too long to get out of their parking position.
“What the hell is going on” Cortana asked, finally getting in sync with Serina just as the first radar pulses reflected back from the incoming projectile.
“We have a kinetic impactor incoming for the working site on the moon” she replied focused, “small projectile, but moving at more than a percentage of the speed of light. I think we will get off one shot at it.”
The eyes of Cortana's Grid avatar widened. “Do we have something to intercept it?”
“No we don’t, it was so small I saw it just half a second ago. Two hundred milliseconds until I will shoot it with one of our lasers, the others are in the wrong position. Not enough time to warn anyone.”
Cortana frowned.
“Make sure everyone is ready for a rescue mission, I hope the Daneverse astronauts will survive.”
The timer ticked down to zero and a blue pulse of light raced outwards and hit the incoming projectile, vaporizing most of it instantly. Normally that would have neutralized any projectile easily.
But the projectile was only a fraction of a seconds away from hitting its target, so the superheated metal vapor had no time to dissipate. A whole section of Pan’s surface flashed bright white as the icy surface was vaporized.
In a certain way, the laser had turned a sniper weapon into a shotgun. But a shotgun was still a lethal weapon.
