Living Ship Chap 3

[Aragon Speed]

Chapter 3: Unusual Readings


Tarron woke with a slight headache about half way through the next day. He had been asleep for about 14 quazuras (give or take 5 mizuras). The exhaustion from the previous day coupled with such a long sleep had caused the headache, and he wandered into the kitchen to find some painkillers. After taking a couple of tablets, he rummaged through the cupboards looking for something edible that grabbed his attention. He couldn’t find anything, so in the end he settled for a bowl of delexian flakes.

He was halfway through the bowl when his father came through the door from the living room. “I thought I heard you rummaging around in here. I was just on-line with the central database, or I’d have joined you sooner.”

“I had a headache when I first got in here, so it’s probably best that it’s had time to clear a bit. I doubt I would have been much company five mizuras ago.” Tarron said smiling. “What did you find out?”

“The ‘Roosters’ are having a good season. They seem to only have lost 1 game in their last 14.”

Tarron had to grin at the lame joke in spite of not wanting too “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

“You mean that mineral you found?”

His father put on such an air of indifference that Tarron knew he had found something out about it that was interesting, but if he wanted to play games he could do that as well. “No, I meant how are the ‘Raiders’ doing? Why would I want to know about the ‘Roosters’? That’s your team.”

His father couldn’t keep up the charade, and unable to retain his nonchalant countenance any longer, started to laugh. Tarron smiled and returned to his breakfast while waiting for his father to tell him what he had found out.

“It’s a known mineral.” His father said. “It’s called nividium, and yes it is rare. In fact 4% is quite a high density reading for it. Not the highest, but even at 1% it would still be worth sticking a mine on, so at 4% we can expect quite a nice profit from it.

I had a look at the mining equipment site to see if we would have to take any special precautions during mining, but only the same as you would while mining silicon, in fact a silicone mine is more than adequate for the job. Nividium is harder than silicone so when you order a silicone mine you have to specify a nividium drilling bit and bit casings, but apart from that it’s fairly straightforward.”

Tarron smiling replied. “Well the second bit made me want to go back to bed, equipment is your thing not mine. The first bit was interesting though, you know the only thing I’m interested in is how many credits I’m going to have to fund my gate racing dreams.”

Tarron’s father smiled at the standing joke between them. Both of them knew that Tarron had no aspirations to become a gate racer, maybe a mechanic for one, but not the racer himself. “Well if you can drag yourself away from your fantasy world for a little while, one of the new energy ‘droids,” Glancing down at a data pad in his hands he continued. “ er… serial ECD 113428795, was supplied with a faulty mounting bearing. It’ll need swapping out.”

“What another one? Ok, if can you transfer the serial to my pad I’ll get to it after I fix that faulty conduit in section zeta.”

“Ah yes, I’d forgotten about that. Ok, I’ll leave you with your soggy breakfast, or should that be lunch by now? Anyway, I’ll see you at dinner tonight.” With that Tarron’s father got up and headed towards the hallway that led to the entrance of their home.

Tarron glanced down at his bowl of delexian flakes and noticed that they were indeed soggy. With a dejected sigh he picked up the ruin of his breakfast and dumped it into the recycler, and then headed outside towards the awaiting conduit.




That evening after dinner Tarron lay on his bed in his room wondering what to do with himself. His father was in the control room trying to track down a jumpdrive fitted mammoth that was willing to bring a nividium mine out this far, so he was pretty much left to his own devices. He had a couple of projects that he was working on down in the maintenance section of the security dock, but while changing the bearing on the EC ‘droid, his hand had slipped off the wrench he was using. This had removed the skin on three of his knuckles, and had bruised his hand enough that it was stiff and mildly painful when he tried to move his fingers. So he had decided that it was probably not a good idea to fiddle around with things that needed careful and minute adjustments. He had thought about watching a film, but when he had looked at the collection he and his father had, he could not find anything he felt like watching.

Looking across the room Tarron’s eyes passed across the bookshelves under his TV, which was attached to the wall on an adjustable arm for ease of positioning so you could watch it from anywhere in the room. He was sometimes quite a bookworm, and had a sizeable collection of books. It was something that had irritated his father when they had moved from their first ore mine in Antigone Memorial (which was a lucky find in itself as the asteroid it was on had a 90% ore density) to this one. Tarron smiled at the memory of his father complaining that he could have got them all on a data-stick and put them in his pocket rather than having to hump a pile of dead trees around. He got up and wandered over to his shelves to see if there was anything there he felt like reading.

Scanning down the shelf looking at the titles, one caught his eye. It was a book by a Boron writer talking about how normal everyday sounds could sound quite different underwater. It wasn’t a very good book, and the only reason he hadn’t got rid of it was that it was a present from a distant aunt. What had caught his eye was the title.

‘Strange Echo’s’

It niggled at something in the back of his mind, but for a sezura or two he couldn’t work out what. Then he remembered the odd gravidar echo from the nividium asteroid. Was that normal for nividium? For some reason he was feeling excited, it might not be normal for nividium. His father hadn’t mentioned anything like that, and it’s the type of thing he would have looked into while checking what equipment he would need to mine the asteroid. He decided to have a look at the central database for himself and quickly stood up.

About 15 sezura later, when he had stopped swearing profusely, he stood up again being careful not to hit his head on the TV arm a second time. He wandered through to the front room, and still rubbing the back of his head sat down in front of the database terminal. After about a mizura he had found the right section, and was looking at the data about nividium. It took awhile to read through it all, and most of it was about the chemical composition, mining equipment needed, current uses, and theorised possible future uses, but there was no mention anywhere of it interfering with scanners. In fact one of its possible new uses was in the design of a new quadplex scanner system. Shutting down the terminal, Tarron wandered back to his room and sat on the edge of the bed. If nividium hadn’t caused the sensor echo, what had?

His thoughts were interrupted at that moment by the front door chime sounding. Mildly miffed at the intrusion he got up and wandered through to the hall and looked at the vid-cam to see who was outside. It was Nirisa so he opened the door.

“Hi, what are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry, do your friends need to make appointments now?” She replied with a smile.

“Ah, sorry, that didn’t come out how I meant. I just wasn’t expecting you.”

“Repeat last question…”

Tarron laughed. “Well as you seem to be here you might as well come in.”

“Don’t do me any favours now. I can always make an appointment for another day.”

“Why is it I always feel like I’m on the defensive with you?”

“Maybe it’s because you engage your mouth before your brain, you’re not a closet Sagittarian are you?” She asked raising an eyebrow.

“What the hells a Sagittarian? No, on second thought don’t tell me, I’m sure I’d regret the answer. Well are you coming in or not? If I’m going to spend the night being insulted I’d rather be comfortably sitting down.”

“I don’t know, I might just decide to be insulted myself.”

“Well you can be insulted here, or you can be insulted in comfort with a cup of tea.”

“Hmm, the tea sounds good. Just as long as you know I’m only coming in for the tea.”

“Of course.”

They made their way through to the living room, and while Nirisa made herself comfortable on the sofa, Tarron continued through to the kitchen to make the tea. A short while later when he returned with the tea Nirisa wasn’t on the sofa anymore; she was sat at the database terminal. As he placed the tea next to her he looked at what she had on the screen, it was the information about nividium.

Nirisa thanked him for the tea, and then said. “I think if your father can get that nividium mine out there, I might ask for a transfer.”

“Ore getting a bit mundane for you is it?” Tarron jested.

“No, but being station manager my wages are a percentage of whatever the stations profits are. I could become quite well off working on that mine.”

“You might want to hold off on that idea for a while.” He warned.

Nirisa turned to face him. “Why?”

So Tarron told her about the sensor echo, how he had assumed it was down to the mineral, but now they knew the mineral was nividium and should not be causing any type of sensor anomalies.

“I was checking on that just before you arrived.” He finished.

“So what do think it is? Was there anything unusual about the asteroid?”

“I have no idea, and not that I noticed, but the reading was coming from the opposite side to where I was, and as I assumed it was caused by the mineral I didn’t bother to go exploring. So I can’t say for sure.”

“Ok, but I’m coming with you.”

“Huh? Would you like to run that past me again? I think I must have passed out or something, there seems to a whole chunk of conversation missing from my memory.”

“Did you hit your head as well as your hand?

“Well, now that you mention it…”

“You didn’t did you?”

“Er, yeah, sort of.”

Nirisa started to laugh.

“When you have quite finished, perhaps we can return to the topic at hand, and you can tell me how not knowing if there was anything wrong with the ‘roid equates to me having decided to go back, and you inviting yourself along?”

Nirisa, still giggling, replied. “Well you are going back aren’t you?”

“I don’t know. I suppose so. I hadn’t really got that far along with my thought process, as I said I had only just checked out if nividium could have caused the echo just before you arrived.”

“Well I want to go with you. This has got me intrigued now.”

“Well I have no problem with that, could do with the company, but what about work?”

“There’s nothing wrong with the station at the moment, well nothing that can’t wait a day, so you’re OK.”

“What about you? The station manager can’t just go dashing off around the universe on a whim just because she wants to.” Tarron said.

“That’s true, but as tomorrow is my day off anyway, I can spend it how I want.”

Chap 4: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=181171

[Syndrome]

Other aspects of your writing are starting to show now. The touch of humour goes well.

[Aragon Speed]

Starting to get a feel for the characters now.

[collins50]

Good read, I like the way you have the Characters interact.

[Aragon Speed]

Thx.