Tales From Tewanta

Ludwig's Deposit, HIP 75862 3 C - 3308-08-02 17:57 GST Maria Gonzales Matsui was coming towards the end of her last patrol of Ludwig's Deposit extraction settlement. She'd just finished inspecting the container stacks and smaller structures on the far side of landing pad two, and was now walking the perimeter of the pad on the way to storage warehouse. Her pace was brisk but she was taking care to walk lightly. Even after a year working and living on this little moon, HIP 75862 3 C, she still wasn't used to the lower gravity of under 0.1g, and still occasionally took embarrassingly high bounding steps. Her childhood on a high gravity colony world had given her a strong physique. She was short and slim, but probably was the strongest guard at the settlement. The year in the lower gravity hadn't weakened her yet, in part, due to the gruelling training schedule that the security chief, Charles Thompson, insi...

COL 285 Sector DS-I C10-8 - 3308-08-02 11:15 GST Frederich Pohl eased back on the throttle and angled The Argus' trajectory away from the system's only star. The ship's fuel scoop deployed automatically and Frederich guided the ship on a safe course through the upper reaches of the stellar atmosphere, balancing heat build up in the ship against refueling time. There was no hurry with this mission, a routine reconnaissance patrol, and therefore no point in putting the ship in any danger. When the ship was fuelled he pulled away from the K Class star and, at about fifty light seconds away from the star, slowed the ship down to the minimum supercruise speed. He opened a comms channel to Brandi Chen, the ship's engineer and signal analyst. "Hey, Brandi! We're in position for the system scan." "Okey dokey! Beginning a full spectrum scan. Bets that we find that this system is as empty an...