Hyperions Hearth (Part the second)

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

Hyperions Hearth (Part the second)

Aerion clutched at the SmartCard given him by agent Markovitz, the sodium street lamps caused the insignia of the Argon Security Force to flare and sparkle. He inserted the card into his communicator, the device beeped on registering the details. Sighing outloud, Aerion remembered his father. Anton Snelder had been very much larger than life, a tall bear of a man. Grabbing life with both hands and laughing while he did it. Snelder senior, had been a fighter pilot in his earlier years, he had used his flying skills to great effect, during prospecting, and in his search for Ancient artifacts. So the means of his death had been all the more shocking, an AI pilot, had malfunctioned during docking, causing the transport to collide with the docking arm. The shield generator had failed, and the transport had been torn almost in half. Everybody had been so shocked, AI malfunction was extremely rare, a one in a million chance.

The death of his father had left a raw wound, and now almost a year later, Professor Mosu, murdered. For the first time in his life, Aerion felt truly alone. Trudging slowly through the streets of the habitat, he arrived at his apartment block. He used his ID card to open the door, in the lobby, the building's AI scanned his irises. Aerion entered the lift and selected the fourth floor. As the door closed a feminine voice spoke, "Welcome back Mr. Snelder, you have 24 messages, several voice mails, and the local post service is holding a package for you." So the building's AI was being female, at least she hadn't said "have a nice day". Exiting the lift he walked over to his apartment, the door opened automatically and closed again behind him. "Damn, I feel so tired" he said out loud, he made it through to the bedroom and dropped onto the bed, within a few minutes he was sound asleep.

Zantander's mine had several airlocks on the asteroids surface, these were used by the surface mining teams. A small ship approached an airlock on the nightside of the asteroid. Orange warning lights began to flash as the external doors slid open, the craft entered and the doors slid shut. The lighting, in the habitats main cavern, was now quite subdued, simulating night. A figure wearing dark clothing moved quickly and quietly up to the service entrance of a local power generator, a brief actinic flash and the shadowy figure entered. A few minutes later lights in the street and in apartments started to go off. It was soon pitch black for several blocks around the generator. The fighter craft approached an apartment block, then slowly rose to the fourth floor windows.

Aerion woke, feeling lousy, he needed the bathroom and a drink of water. As he stood up from the bed, nothing happened. "Light please", he said, still total darkness. "Jeez now what" he thought, stumbling across the bedroom, then the living area, he made it to the kitchenette. Here he managed to find a flashlight, with the aid of this he finally made it into the bathroom. The bathroom door had just closed, and Aerion was preparing to relieve himself, when the world exploded all around him. The pilot of the fighter, discharged all of his lasers at the windows of the apartment. The windows literally disintegrated and showered the internal surfaces with thousands of deadly shards. The bed, carpets and furnishings instantly became a blazing inferno, thick black smoke poured out into the open air. Huge chunks of cladding fell off the walls, the kitchen cabinets distintegrated and the sink became a pile of smouldering metal slag. The pilot satisfied that nothing could have survived that attack, swung his craft around and swiftly headed for an exit from the main cavern.