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Date: 23-12-2055 Location: Mining Tug Yukon "Cornelius", the Solar Asteroid Belt.
It had been a hard trip so far. Ella had been hoping to set her crews fortunes by grabbing a large platinum asteroid from the belt. She thought she had it all figured out. The Doc on board had told her it was the wrong material, but she wouldn't listen. She KNEW it was platinum the spectrometer doesn't lie, she had said.well, the spectrometer doesn't lie, but when you get a dusting of platinum over a silica rock, then it shows exactly what she saw.
"Status on fuel?" She inquired of the junior officer monitoring ship systems.
"15% ma'am," Junior officer Philips said. A small hint of corn ncern creeping into her voice.
Captain Ella Seward, would not let them run out of fuel. That was not an option. "Ensign Rodgers, have you found us a suitable comet yet?"
They could harvest the comet for water, and use their solar panels to break down the water into usable hydrogen and oxygen. That was what deep space mining had first been used for, fueling ships outside the Earths atmosphere.
It was cheaper to send a fueling stationa and mining tug up, and then making fuel, rather than trying to send. Full tank up. Just enough to get it up, then refuel in Solar Orbit, and then off to wherever the ship was bound afterward.
In fact, that was what the M.T. Yukon was supposed to be doing, but as they scanned asteroids and saw a spike of platinum, the Captain became excited. This could be her chance to make a fortune and set her crew up for life! But the giant ball of sand had been next to worthless, and the time and effort spent getting to it led to the use of more than half of their fuel. So now they needed a huge comet, or two smaller ones. 1 to fill their tanks, 1 to haul back for the federation.
Rodgers finally spoke up, "Negative ma'am. I have a 1 ton comet at 2 o'clock, inclination 45degrees positive. It would give us approximately 30% of a fuel load if we breakdown the entire comet."
"Lieutenant Kirk, please set course for the comet Ensign Rodgers has found. Philips, notify engineering to prepare the electrolysis generator." Ella was nothing if not decisive. When she made up her mind there was no going back. This was good and bad. Good, because she wasted no time when there was an opportunity, bad because sometimes those opportunities don't pan out.
****** 10 minutes later ******
As the Yukon sidled up beside the comet, lieutenant Tyrone Livingstons engineers prepared to gravimetric harness to draw it to the ship. This would allow them to break down the water of the comet to make the fuel.
As they drew the comet closer, Tyrone ne realized this wouldn't be enough fuel to fill their tanks and get them back home. "Well folks, look we will be out here a little while longer. With that, his team set to harvested ng the badly needed fuel.
As the tanks were being filled, Ella allowed the shift to drift, rather than using the precious fuel they still had.
"Captain, we have something odd," said Rodgers.
"What have we got ensign?" Ella asked, hoping ng it would be something exciting.
"Well ma'am as we drift we should be maintaining the same orbit as the comet, as we had matched pace with it before we began harvest." Rodgers explained.
"Yes obviously. So what's going on?" She was getting impatient.
"Well ma'am, we are being pulled out further, as though there is a mass or, or some other force pulling us out." Rodgers said, with a hint of confusion in his voice.
"Okay, so we have giant ass rock tugging us out? So what?" Ella asked.
"Ma'am, it's not pulling anything else in the asteroid belt, except us!" Rodgers finished up.
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