Temple in the Stars – Part 2

Sometimes, the absolute hardest thing to do with a dream is admit it’s time to take a step backwards.  Due to circumstances beyond my control, my job has seen fit to require me to drive into the office every day once more.  As my office is close to 90 miles away, that has chewed up close to three hours of each and every work day.  Since my day is already nine hours long, my time for writing has basically vanished.  As it stands, I am chewing into my already small amount of sleep time to write this lesser amount.  As far as editing goes, that will need to wait until the weekend.

By a stroke of good fortune, I have a wonderful three and a half day weekend on the way very soon.  I am going to take the time made available to me to write an extraordinary amount.  Further, I will need to take the time to edit my work.  I’m ashamed to say that for now, my work will not be edited nearly as much as I would enjoy.  But the important, nay, the vital work must be to write.  Always to write.  Every day to write, to create, to strive against the forces which stand between me and the life I wish to craft for myself.  I will not allow myself to succumb to them.  I will stand against them, and in so doing become shaped by their passing.  Refined in the fires of my tribulation, I shall be made into more than I was before.  Not because the writing has become easier, but because I have proven myself more than equal to the tasks set before me.

Stridently, I present to you…

Temple in the Stars – Part 2

Ashley’s ride to the already constructed habitation unit was rather uneventful, even if it was a bit slow.  As she was now in system, and didn’t require an interstellar train, she was bused to her destination via one of the personal transportation units in the enormous belly of Oswalt Industrial Smelting’s Epsilon station.  Specifically, out of the cavernous docking bay 312.  Unlike the miners who would be required to put their own habitation unit together with the aide of automatic robotic constructor units, she had received an assignment to work a hab unit which had been abandoned by the previous miner.  The men and women who were unable to handle the extreme isolation of their position, working long hours and taking extreme risks, took the option to break their contracts.  When a contract was voided, the habitation unit they were assigned was cleaned, brought up to regulation safety specs, and the contract was re-upped with a new miner.

If Ashley was able to hang on until the end of the contract, which would last until the temporary hab unit reached the end of it’s life cycle, she would be offered a fresh contract for an additional three years.  She could take the contract, enjoy six months off, and have a guaranteed job to come back to.  As her father had constantly told her, volunteering for voided contracts was a sure fire way to stay employed.  It was always best to prove you were willing to work under any circumstances, especially when you were willing to accept the smaller pay of a partially completed contract.  Those were the men and women who got the best contracts from their Union whenever the next round were released.

As Ashley’s personal transport unit approached her new home, she looked at sector 24.  It was populated by an extraordinary number of smaller asteroids, with few larger than the size of the craft she found herself in.  There was one notable exception, but it would be impossible to get to.  It was completely surrounded on all sides by it’s smaller kin.  The habitation unit was bolted to the side of a medium sized asteroid, chosen simply because of the lack of other options.  Even though they had dragged it to the outskirts of the sector, it was still within striking distance of the bulk of her assigned area.  Enormous signal buoys hovered at the dividing lines of either side of her space.  They would constantly ping the asteroids she was allowed to mine, alerting either of her neighbors when a new asteroid had entered their zone or letting her know when she had gained a new opportunity.  Ashley was thrilled by all the smaller asteroids present.  They might have less to offer in terms of enormous lodes of ore, but they were far safer to mine and provided consistent daily progress for her contract quotas.  The gargantuan asteroid still intrigued her;  the other asteroids seemed to be screening it deliberately.  Ashley’s mind began whirring, offering her possibility after possibility of how she could get her hands on the tantalizing potential it represented. 

Three weeks on, and Ashley was making great progress towards her first semiannual contract goal.  Her father had always taught her that a smart miner did everything in his or her power to meet the quota first, then to go after potential windfalls.  Too many miners forgot that, and let their preoccupation keep them from maintaining their contract quotas.  Ashley had a plan though: The tiny planet had attracted a veritable army of smaller asteroids.  Who was to say that she couldn’t kill two birds with one stone?  Why not heed her dads advice, and at the same time, gather the necessary elements to satisfy the smelting complex’s never-ending demands?  It was a suave move, and one that her father would be proud of.  All she had to do now is keep it up.  She had cleared out a tenth of the asteroids already, and she had another sixty plus weeks of this contract.  With help from Everett to manage the day to day safety checklist, all she had was time.  Keeping herself so busy also helped her deal with the absence of her family.  She had never been without them, and now all she had to manage was herself and the small fleet of mining vehicles.  It kept her just as busy, but it wasn’t the same at all.  How has Dad been able to do this for so long? Ashley found herself wondering more than once as she went through the routine motions that made up the bulk of her days.

Three months on, Ashley had managed to clear enough space that she could finally set up a scanning drone to take a complete analysis of just what her prize was hiding.  It would take a few days for the drone to finish with its labors, so Ashley filled the time with plotting the trajectories of the nearby asteroids from the comfort of her survey vehicle.  With her shields drawing maximum power, she could take a direct hit from anything an asteroid belt had to offer.  Usually, her time in this section of the asteroid belt was behind the controls of her rather larger mining vessel as she did everything she could to avoid oncoming danger.  It was exhaustive work, taking hours of concentration and physical exertion.  Now, she could just relax and take in the sights.  The asteroid, was simply enormous, almost as large on it’s own as the entire smelting complex!  It seemed two be two gigantic hunks of rock which had fused in a ragged zigzagging crease from top to bottom.  What mysteries do you hide?  Ashley thought as she stared at the terrible marvel.  What fate has brought us together?

To be continued…

Asteroidfully,
Justin