Deep Space

  Chapter 3

  Scorched Rock

  Glenn knelt down and scooped up some soil samples with his gloved hand. He cracked open a pocket on his EV suit and poured the mixture into it. The temperature adjusted to compensate for the increased thermal energies. He stared at the ground through the visor on his helmet and touched the ground again. It had grown cooler since he last checked about thirty minutes ago.

  The suit’s adjustments weren’t as quick as before, and he knew enough to tell the difference. The ground had probably gone from three hundred to two hundred degrees since. At this rate, the heat would dissipate completely in a matter of hours, regardless of the nearby star’s rays.

  “For what it’s worth, you were right, Glenn,” Kelly spoke through his suit’s internal speakers. “This whole rock is radiating intense heat.”

  “It doesn’t make sense though,” Glenn said. “What do you think caused it?”

  “I checked the star maps. We should be close by a dwarf planet in this solar system.”

  “How close?” Glenn asked.

  He stood up and stared out into the asteroid field, a black void of twilight covered up by stones the size of skyscrapers. He frowned and picked up his pace. The sediment and arguably the rest of the asteroid were radiating heat in the vacuum of space and whatever happened did so no less than a handful of hours ago. Some kind of weapon or natural disaster? Both seemed unlikely.

  “We should see it from here.”

  “And we don’t.”

  “Glenn, I have a bad feeling. You should get back to the ship.”

  “No, it’s all right,” he said. “I’m going to take some more samples. We’ll need to report this to the Federation ASAP.”

  Glenn hopped farther out from the landing site and climbed up a rocky cliff to get a better vantage point. He told Kelly to record video feed from the ship’s onboard cameras, though it lacked the mobility necessary for a genuine assessment.

  He reached up with one hand and grabbed hold of a surface at the top of the cliff, pulling his body up. This asteroid was much smaller than a moon, though thankfully his EV suit came fitted with class E gravity drives on the soles of his boots. He turned them off for a second or two and felt like a super hero as he effortlessly hoisted himself above the cliff face.

  “So this whole field was one planet?” he asked, setting foot on solid ground.

  “A dwarf planet,” Kelly replied. “It’s technically not a planet.”

  “It’s got planet in the name,” Glenn said.

  “Technical jargon,” she said.

  “Understood,” he said.

  The expanse above the ridge carried on as far as he could see. He paid little attention while flying in, but it must have been at least the size of a city and this bordered on the medium end. Impressive, to say the least, though it brought with it some unanswered questions.

  “There wasn’t any life here, was there?” he asked.

  “No,” Kelly replied abruptly.

  She was almost too quick on the trigger. Glenn knew what it meant though. Technically, this dwarf planet amounted to a ball of gritty rock prior to the fireworks, just the kind of place pirates might like to hide. The notion stirred in his head for a while as a lingering thought that prodded him to contemplate the nature of this world’s destruction.

  Glenn stared into the expanse, lost in thought, but his attention popped back into place as a ship navigated the expanse. It lurked a few miles above, and the sight of it made him jump. Glenn climbed down from the ridge and hid behind it. Did they see him? Who was it? Dammit, whoever it was, they were no friends of his.

  “Kelly, I need you to turn off the power. Go dark.”

  “I need the systems active to …” she started, but he cut her off.

  “Just do it!” he yelled through his mic.

  Glenn couldn’t see the Albatross from where he stood. Too many hills and rocky crags sprouted between them. He hesitated to move. He forced down the thought of running back while he watched the space craft navigate through the asteroid field. From the distance, he was lucky enough to spot it at all, let alone determine the make or model, but it seemed small enough weave through the rocks without issue, so it was probably a scout vessel.

  Standard procedure for armed forces. Destroy the encampment and look for survivors. How much firepower did it take to level something the size of a moon? He’d never heard of it before. The Federation barely tanked cruisers and pirates rarely reveled in this kind of destruction. Maybe a secret weapon? He calculated the prospect of testing a tool of mass destruction in the wastes of Delta sector and his fingers grew cold.

  The ship changed its course and began a slow descent.