In A Starship's Wake

Chapter 45: Four Machines

Four Machines Mining Station was still nothing but a bright speck in the windshield when Great Mandan Laker left faster-than-light travel and began decelerating. It would take another half hour to reach it. Once Joseph had that timetable he announced it on the intercom and radioed the station to advise them. Charlie was already on the bridge, seated at the copilot's station, and the others would undoubtedly filter in to watch their arrival.

"Charlie, would you keep an eye on our course for a minute? I'm going to put one of the telescopes on the station so we can get a better look at it."

"Not a problem. Take your time, we're fine for a while."

An asteroid with a variety of manmade protrusions appeared in a window on the windshield once Joseph aligned the telescope. The rock itself was an ovoid shape, around three miles long and two across. The most notable of the manmade modifications was a ring of metal lattice structures sticking out of one end for over another half-mile. Attached to their ends were smaller, shorter metal lattices that reached out toward the center of the ring. It looked rather like a many-toed claw. A few hundred feet behind it he spotted the docking structure for ore haulers.

"They've made a lot of progress for how long they've been here," Charlie said.

"You'd be the one to know. This is the first asteroid mine I've seen this close."

"Well, you'll know them as well as I do before long."

Nerves over his first time mooring Great Mandan Laker were affecting Joseph more than he expected. Jittery already, he'd even limited his coffee intake when he woke today. She was much larger than any ship he'd moored outside a simulator, and the match had to be more precise than Garden Variety Animal had ever required. He found himself absorbed in study of the display that would show him the position of their cargo intake hoppers relative to their counterparts that protruded from the station.

Focused on that, he didn't notice that other members of the crew had joined them on the bridge until Rebecca came to lean against the helmsman's console. "I didn't realize the station was an asteroid itself."

"That's pretty common in asteroid mines," Charlie said. "Especially remote ones like this. Less material has to be hauled in for construction, and as long as you pick the asteroid carefully you generate income as you build. With how young the station is, I'd bet a month's pay that the ore we're taking came from this asteroid."

"No bet," Samuel said from the doorway. He clomped down the ramps to join them by the windshield. "That's exactly where it came from, I've been around enough mines to know."

"Even if he offers a better bet, please don't gamble amongst yourselves." Joseph rubbed his face. Even the thought made him tired. Bets that size would make fights between crew members inevitable, even with the people he'd picked.

Charlie had been a ship hand long enough to predict Joseph's thoughts exactly, and chuckled. "It wasn't a serious offer. I'll play the odd card game, but you didn't hire any big gamblers."

"What's the big claw thing on the end of the asteroid?" Rebecca asked.

"The first few construction stages of a Cup," Charlie said. "The term for it varies place to place, but it's a structure to enclose a fair-sized asteroid while it's broken apart into manageable pieces. This one will be able to hold rocks with about a half-mile diameter."

"It isn't finished though?"

"No, although I think they have all the structural and mechanical pieces up, so they could start using it. They still have to put a skin on it, which is going to take a lot of time and metal. Once that's completed, it will stop any asteroid pieces from escaping as they cut it up. If they use it like this, the miners have to retrieve any large chunks that get away, otherwise they'll become hazards for the station and nearby ships."