Trans Solar, Book 2

When Maroon is not a Color

The darkness of the darkest regions of Kuiper Belt was truly darker than darkness upon the solar plane. There was considerably denser matter floating about in the Kuiper Field than within solar space, including within the asteroid belt. The solar plane was comparatively free of random debris gathered by planets and moons periodically sweeping through their orbits. The Kuiper Belt, in comparison, was literally full of unswept debris, ranging in size from pebbles to the mass of small planets, thus even starlight was blocked from reaching into the thicker areas of the belt.

The Colossus duo, Ligo and Arum, had cleared away almost all small debris from their locale, creating a small safety zone around them within which a good pilot could closely orbit. While the pilot, Wooing, had taken advantage of the rare circumstance to bring the group of ships safely to decelerate and find anchor upon Ligo, Captain Banish had separated the trio of ships prior to anchoring the core LMA.

The trio of ships stood apart, taking up varied positions above and below Ligo, staying near the gap between the small planets. Darkness and extreme darkness pervaded the inner areas, with only a small glimmer of starlight improving the cleared areas. Ships lacked sufficient light for a small planet except for local resourcing operations. The nightmarish forms of the spatial debris fields threatened violent results for anything careless enough to brush upon their jagged features.

Only Ligo and Arum, by virtue of their collective masses rubbing against each other and the local debris, attained relatively smooth areas courtesy of the relentless grinding. A dense particulate dust coated each planet, evidence of uncounted skirmishes and also evidence of no recent large impacts disturbing the very low gravity holding the dust down. When lights penetrated the murk to show small craters their age could be gauged by how much dust floated nearby. Small clouds of dust drifting very speedily supplied proof of Ligo's present axis and rotation. Arum was untenable as a base due to its speed of rotation and proximity to lesser KBO nearby. 

Captain Banish ordered his ships to establish safe distance above and below Ligo. Crew and one officer worked in a depression, securing the LMA to a protrusion and to the planet surface in front and to the side. This would enable stream LMA to target objects nearing the planet, and would precede the construction of processing and other resourcing operations. 

Any hopes for stability in the jumbled darkness were misplaced. Objects seemed to appear out of the impenetrable blackness without pattern or predictability, moving to intersect with Ligo and Arum. the frequency of impacts clearly surged in waves, as if other foreign bodies had generated tidal waves of disturbance through the nearby expanse of the Kuiper belt. The silence of space and the intensely dark surroundings amplified the eeriness of sporadic sparkles flashing behind the scenes as impacts occurred. 

The meager gravities of Arum and Ligo acted in concert to both attract smaller masses into grinding impacts. The planets rotational velocities would hurl away the impacting objects, inciting domino waves of spreading secondary and later impacts. The area around Ligo and Arum turned out to be far more active than if the transit packs had chosen almost any other destination. The only virtue of the planet's destructive capacity was the periodic creation of clean space around their dance arena.

Ligo and Arum felt gravity compelling them to unite. The uniqueness of their respective masses in the morass of smaller bodies drove them together. The opposition of their rotational force hurled them apart. The debris fields ground into dust around their waltzing pattern. As the planets danced in and out they also moved around, grinding away slowly at the agonizing sharpness of the debris field. The waltz turned the pair of small planets into a gigantic grinding operation which attracted matter into its destructive field. 

So long had the planets waltzed and ground down the local debris that the tonnage of dust hurled into the surroundings after major impacts would obscure everything in dense blackness. For days. The thick soup of dust could be dozens of kilometers deep before resettling into nearly uniform coverage of the rocky planetoids. The Kipper X was fortunate to find the planetoid waltz in progress towards the most distant separation, isolating each body within only its own gravity arena. The downside of this circumstance was that these bodies were in the likeliest phase to encounter other bodies being drawn into the outer edge of the dance arena.