and the tunnels that will maintain a zero gravity environment. The Aurora will not have to compensate as we will.”
“Well that’s something, anyway,” she muttered. She looked at Marcus, who was still sitting on the bench across from her, next to Tug, sound asleep and snoring inside his helmet. She reached out her foot and gave him a kick.
“Wake up!” she hollered.
Marcus shook slightly, opening his eyes with a start. For a moment, he wasn’t quite sure where he was. The fact that he was closed up inside a pressure suit also caught him by surprise. It was in fact the first time he had worn one, and he didn’t care much for the idea.
Scrambling to get the faceplate up, they could hear his muffled curses aimed at Josh for closing his faceplate to begin with.
“There it is,” Loki said, pointing at the crack in the asteroid over their heads.
“Lining her up now,” Josh announced as he corrected their approach course to line up with the crack above them.
Both Tug and Jessica leaned in toward the center of the shuttle, trying to see forward through the cockpit windows. But despite their best efforts, the view was not very revealing.
Josh began thrusting toward the asteroid to bring them in closer. “Just a touch, to let the asteroid’s gravity pull us down,” he said. “Rolling over.” Josh rolled the shuttle on its longitudinal axis so that its bottom was now facing the asteroid.
“Are there any other windows back here?” Jessica asked. “I’m supposed to be checking the place out and I can’t see shit from back here.”
“Lock your visors down and go to internal support,” Marcus instructed them. Marcus watched as each of them locked down their helmet visors, checked that their internal life support systems were working and then reported such to him with a thumbs up sign.
“Depress the ship,” Marcus told Loki.
“Depressurizing.”
Slowly, over a few minutes, the sounds inside the shuttle faded away as the air that carried them was sucked out of the cabin. Once they were in silence and could hear nothing other than their own respirations, Marcus moved to the back of the ship and activated the loading ramp. The big ramp, that when closed made up the aft wall of the cabin, lowered away, creating a platform off the back end of the shuttle.
“Did you order a view?” Marcus asked, gesturing toward the open back end of the shuttle.
Jessica walked out onto the platform, activating the magnetic grips in the soles of her boots to keep from falling of the end. Once at the extreme end, she turned around to face forward. The shuttle was not all the way down in the crack, which was about three hundred meters deep and more than three times that in width. It was a breathtaking view, with the massive turquoise gas-giant in the distant black sky. “This is amazing,” she exclaimed.
“The entrance is coming up on the port side,” Loki reported. “We’ll be coming to port in about ten seconds.”
Jessica could see the overhang begin jutting out on the port side for a few seconds before they turned. Moments later, they were inside the massive tunnel. The walls were ragged, but overall they were a lot smoother than she had expected. Every twenty to thirty meters, she saw strategically placed rings that went around the inside of the tunnel’s diameter. “What are those rings?”
“Lighting, gravity displacement emitters, sensors, and comm-arrays,” Tug explained as he stepped out onto the ramp next to her. “They are located all along the tunnels. It makes the tunnels very easy to navigate when the facility is operational.”
“Did you guys do all this yourselves?”
“No. We could never afford this level of construction. The facility was once a mining base. It was abandoned decades ago and has been awaiting de-orbit. We simply took advantage of its availability. We only had to provide the power plant, which we got from a few otherwise inoperable Ta’Akar ships.”
“Still, it’s pretty impressive.”
“You do not have such facilities on Earth?”
“Oh, we’re mining our asteroid belt as well, just not from the inside out.”
“It takes many generations to fully excavate some of the more massive asteroids. This one is one of the smaller ones. It is only a few kilometers across, but it was perfect for our plans. I only wish we had been given an opportunity to utilize it much earlier.”
The tunnel suddenly opened up into a much larger cavern, at least a kilometer in diameter. The walls, floors, and ceilings were craggy and irregular, and there was another tunnel that appeared to be an exit on the opposite side. All along the walls were strange boxes and domes, some joined together by surface tunnels, others seemingly standing alone and disconnected. Along one side of the cavern there was a large framework surrounding what looked like a platform of some type jutting out from the wall. There was an entrance with big double doors that led from the platform into the rock itself.
“Is that the facility?” Jessica asked.
“That’s the dock, yes. All of these buildings are the facility.”
“But they’re all at such varying angles,” Jessica commented. “Doesn’t it get disorienting?”
“Each building has its own gravity plating. It’s easier than trying to orient every structure to use the asteroid’s rather weak gravity. You get used to it after a while.”
“Take us down onto the platform to port,” Tug instructed the flight crew.
The shuttle turned to port and descended slightly. As it approached the platform, it slowly rotated until its aft end was facing the big double doors on the wall. The shuttle backed over the platform before finally extending its landing gear and setting down.
Marcus lowered the boarding ramp the last meter until it made contact with the platform, allowing Tug, Jalea, and Jessica to step off the ramp and onto the platform.
Jessica turned back to face the shuttle. “Josh, you and Loki stay with the ship. If we’re not back in thirty minutes, head back to the Aurora and get help.”
“Got it.”
“What about me?” Marcus asked, not sure that he wanted to hear the answer.
“Come on, tough guy. You’re with me.”
“Great.”
Jessica and Marcus followed Tug and Jalea across the platform to a small personnel hatch just to the right of the cargo doors. Tug spun the hatch lock and swung the hatch open. There was very little illumination from the shuttle’s exterior flood lights making its way into the next room, so Tug and Jalea both turned on their helmet lights as they entered. Following suit, Jessica and Marcus did the same. They stepped into the airlock and closed the hatch behind them, repeating the process to pass through the inner hatch. Once inside, they made their way down a long, dark corridor, the beams from the helmet lights dancing about the walls. After about ten meters, they came to a door marked Control.
The small control room consisted of four consoles on one side of the room and another four opposite them. Within moments, Tug was at the correct control panel and had activated the emergency lighting.
“I have activated the emergency backup power. The external communications array should be active in a few moments. It will have a limited range until the main reactor is online, which will take about an hour. So it can provide communications in the general vicinity of this asteroid only. Once the main reactor is online, we should be fully operational.”
“Shuttle, this is Nash.”
“Go ahead,” Loki answered.
“We’re good here. It’ll take about an hour to get everything powered up. Meanwhile, take off and get outside. Once you’re outside the asteroid, contact the Aurora and tell her she’s clear to approach. Transmit your scanner data back to them and then stand by until you hear from me.”
“Copy that. Taking off.”
“So what do we do now?” Marcus asked. “Sit around and wait?”
“I don’t know about you,” Jessica said, “but I’m gonna take a look around this place.”