SuBBrilliant Blog

Mia gave up. She had reached the bottom of the thing without a trace of what it was. She sat down against a bulkhead to listen to Zay’s response and stare at a glare of light on the opposite wall above a ventilation shaft that sat on what to Mia was the floor.

“You have to keep investigating even if it means bringing in guest salvagers to help. The fact that you haven’t found anything is confirmation that this find is significant beyond its metal value. Who would go to such lengths to remove all identifying marks on a ship unless it was important. There has top be something there,” Zay kept talking.

Mia just kept staring at the glare. She had stopped listening. Then she stood.

“… you have to realize that in the salvager scheme of things, a find like that..” Zay’s message continued.

Why was there a light? It didn’t move when Mia’s light did. What was the source. She leaned over and peered into the end of the ventilation shaft opposite. Was it a ventilation shaft? The metal at it’s end wasn’t a grill but badly folded solid pieces. Through a gap she saw an LED. She pulled out some tools and pried it apart. Below was a control bank. It must be auxilliary control she thought!

“… so don’t give up. Keep moving. Keep pushing….”

Mia resisted the urge to message back right away interrupting Zay before she had finished. Most people might not notice the timing. Zay would.

“..let us know what else we can do. Zay out,” she finally finished.

Mia immediately messaged back. “I found an auxiliary control room. Dropping down to investigate. You were right Zay!” Why not let her feel like she’d had an effect.

The auxilliary control room was a a narrow chamber with a bank of screens and input devices running down the center. That was where the LED had come from. Whatever long-life batteries still existed on the ship still had enough charge to light them.

At one end of the chamber were three dessicated bodies. They were almost skeletons but bits of cloth and tissue clung to them and littered the floor around them. They were all three lying face first into the wall. If Mia had to guess, they must not have been strapped in when the collision happened, which implied an accident of some sort. Or all three bodies restraints had failed.

One screen was still active with a logging program active. She tried to call up previous logs but the screen could not access storage. Likely it was destroyed in the crash. She was about to give up when she noticed that one log entry showed as still in composition. She chose it ad the last log entry, still in the process of being written appeared, stored in the local systems memory for hundreds of years, waiting to be saved to oblivion.

“Gamelt and Stallion have joined me in auxilliary control. The bridge is destroyed in the impact but engines are still active. No idea what caused attitiude to go haywire like that. Suspect foul play. No other explanation. Hold— Stallion reports an incoming airwave. From where? No ship on what scopes we have left but could be missed. Why? Not much time. Trying to fortify shields but little hope. We won’t make it no matter what. This is the ship Gallian signing off. Gallium control—“ And it stopped.

“Leonard you were right,” Mia messaged, sending an image of the screen. “This is the original Gallian Colony Ship. It looks like they were trying to set it down here for some reason and lost attitude control. They suspected sabotage. Poor suckers They had no idea of the early corporate politics. Likely their executive sponsor was just on the wrong side of a dispute. But to wreck the original colony ship because of it. There’s a story there for sure. Mia out.”

Mya sent three survey drones flying on complex flight paths orthogonal to one another. Most salvagers used one drone at a time and just had it cover all the ground. They might have more than one drone in case of large areas or just to have backup in case of damage but they would only use one of them at a time but Mya had discovered over the years that different drones might often report different information about the same area. So she had developed a system— she called it her algorithm, though it was not technically mathematical. The ‘algorithm’ flew the drones in a way designed to bring out those kinds of discrepancies and resolve them. It led to a huge boost in accuracy for her.

The drones reported data back to her but she just let it carry on back to Zactus and SHOE House for Zay to look over. Zay’s report didn’t take long.

“You’ve got a huge amount of metal down there but it’s thinner in the place I marked. That looks very much like a door. Leonard thinks you should try sending a traditional unlock signal to it once you’ve uncovered it. Just in case it has some kind of passive reciever that still works.”

Mya acknowledged and got to work uncovering the metal. It was corroded and dirty but it definitely resembled a hatch of some kind. Faded black and white stripes vaguely suggested a typical hatch warning flag. Mya sent a traditional unlock signal. She cycled through all the major frequencies and then through the rare but known ones. She was about to take the time to have it cycle through all possible frequencies when a mesage from Leonard arrived.

“Try frequency 1120. That’s the one for the Gallian Colonial ship. It won’t prove anything but I have a gut feeling. Zay bet me a sandwich it doesn’t work.”

Mya tried the extremely unlikely frequency. The door made screeching sounds and tried valiantly to open itself. Mya heard gears whining and stripping themselves. She shoved a hand in a small gap that had opened and gave it a push. The hatch slid to the side quickly tearing quite a bit of skin off in the process. Mya knew better but a combination of excitement and impatient had made her risk it.

“The signal worked though the door was so corroded, that it didn’t open. I had to give it a nudge. Don’t know who wins the sandwich.”

Mya was still pulling out light exploratory gear and making the rest of her equipment safe when a message from Leonard came in.

“I win the sandwich.”

It was followed quickly by Zay saying “Belay that sandwich. We need a third party ruling.”

Mya laughed and sighed and sent back, “I vote Leonard. Heading into the structure to explore. May lose messaging.”

Then she walked through the hatch.

This was when she loved working for SHOE. Away from the drama of headquarters on Zactus but still working remotely with her team there.

Zay was a crack data cruncher. Nobody could match her ability to analyze the stream of information Mya collected for insights and directions nobody else would have thought to even look for.

And Leonard was the hunch master. He took the findings of Zay’s data and pointed Mya in the right direction. Mya’s role was to use their support to dig and make the find. To make the calls that could only be made on the grand when you were looking right at a potential salvage site.

They had done this in the North moons with Zay and Leonard in the ship with Mya. But doing it long distance still felt the same. There was lag to be sure. But the latest reflector technology really helped with that and they had learned to deal.

Mya had been cruising low over an empty plane on the far side of Malaikat. Really just staying close to home because she wanted to knock off early. She was exhausted. The plains had been surveyed a million times but something told her to get a closer look at a set of pipes sticking up out of the ground.

They were noticed on the salvager’s collective maps and unusable, undiggable low value abandoned metal. But Mya decided to see for herself.

The metal was indeed not worth the effort to pull out of the ground. It looked a bit like the remains of some kind of plumbing but there was no record of whatever structure had made use of them.

Mya had made a scan and shot it back to Zactus for Zay’s take.

“I’m seeing slight indications of subsurface metal. Maybe more pipe but it would have to be a lot more to account for this number. Scan more detail about 40 degrees south.”

Mya thought it was awfully close to rescan ut she had learned not to doubt Zay. As she was rescanning she got Leonard’s take.

Pipes don’t come out of nowhere and Zay’s data doesn’t jive well with an abandoned structure. There’s definitely something under there. My guess is a ship. I’m looking for matches. So is Zay.”

A ship? She shot back a message telling them they were crazy along with the rescan. She went back to tlook at the pipes while she waited. It was longer than just the lag time before she got a response. This time from Leonard.

“UH. Zya. That’s a ship. At least that’s what I think. Zay found a match to the pipe configuration. He has his own thoughts though.”

Zay’s message came right after. “The chance of it being a ship are low but it’s still higher than the chances of it being anything else we suppose including wall pipes. Those pipes don’t match any known building code. They’r pretty damn ancient but not older than the common piping codes which haven’t changed in centuries. It matches 14% of ancient long-term voyages.”

A follow up from Leonard came right on its heels. “What she’s too coy to tell you is it matches a colony ship. Specifically the generation ships that settled systems in the era Gallium was founded. Those pipes are ventral exhaust and effluent. They kicked out what little unwanted fumes and liquids the colony ships expelled. Which wasn’t much hence how thin they are. I’m not going to SAY it’s one of the Gallian Arks but only because Zay will punch me if I make such an unfounded assertion. So I Say dig.”

Mya doug.

The mood in south salvage was different. She knew tat for sure. Put she couldn’t quite put her finger on why. North salvage ops were small but they were identified with the planetary system. They were one of its unexpected success stories, growing out of the older and more respectable resource management companies.

In South system salvagers were less numerous and somewhat ignored but at the same time they weren’t controversial. They weren’t seen as upstarts trying to steal away the culture of the system. In fact, they were cautiously embraced by the resource management firms and existence and the much larger and only tangentially related Energey Harvesting companies that operated acrossSouth’s various satellites.

That’s what she didn’t understand about her boss’s attitude. This was a fertile field in which to operate. her boss should have been overjoyed that she was here. Instead her boss just seemed jealous and looking for excuses for her to fail.

But she wasn’t failing. She knew that. Her salvage was as strong as ever and buyers were snapping it up. She panicked when she thought about the need to maintain the consistency of her discoveries. She was deathly afraid her luck would run out as would her stream of good salvage. But so far it didn’t seem that way.

She hoped that after a long enough track record, she could be established in south and allowed to solidify her contributions. Granted, she did not want to become tied only to her boss. She loved the ability to do side enterprises. It’s why she had left RCON and signed on with such a small operation like SHOE. But she didn’t want it to end. She dreaded the idea that she might be cut free.

That’s when her comm flashed. It was Brittany from the planet Delvalli.

“Hey Brit, what’s up?”

“Are you sitting down?” Brittany said. “I debated with my husband whether I should tell you this, but in the end it would be unfair not to.”

“What?”

“I just got a call from SHOE.”

Brittany did some freelance work from time to time so that wasn’t that surprising.

“It was from Connor. He offered me your job. They said they weren’t going to keep you on after the next quarter was over.”

“What did you say?”

“I said I’d think about it. But unless you want me to say yes— I mean— I’m not a salvager really. I just thought you should know.”

She sat down. Now what?

Gallian System

Brief: Settled by Seed ships and pioneers as multi-use system. Early industry primarily mining. Origin system for Gallium Corporation. Site of historical headquarters for Gallium though no longer occupied by the corporation itself. Current primary industries are energy harvesting, resource maximization and salvage.

Inner Planets and moons

Gurun (uninhabited)
Temperatures on the most inner planet make it impractical for habitation though it was extensively mined. It is occasionally used for research or training but no permanent bases exist and all earlier habitation remnants have been salvaged.

Delvalli – Lari
The second planet settled was used as worker habitation and has a strong independent working class tradition. Solar energy harvesting is the main industry.

Gallium – Bask and Provi
The first planet settled and the oldest continuously occupied. The historical headquarters of the Gallium corporation is maintained here by a staff of 6 but is the only presence of the corporation left in its founding system. The planet is the most comfortable for habitation ann the most populous. Salvage operations are protected under local laws but do exist.

Gran Ban asteroids
Settled by pioneers and still occupied mostly by independent resource maximizers raising foodstuffs in hydroponic bays and harvesting energy. However some small-scale salvage operations exist.

Outer Planets

North – Herb, Elektra, Zactus, Verd, Sedang, Friend
The oldest of the outer planet settlements with the first Gallium outpost on Herb, now preserved but not owned by the Gallium corporation. While the Moons and gas giant are mined out, resource maximizers dominate the economy in multiple verticals. Salvage operations thrive here.

South – Malaikat, Naran, Doug, Winter
The more financially successful although younger of the two habitable gas giant systems. Also the cultural center of the system. Energy harvesting and resource maximization dominate the conomy though some salvage operations have taken hold in recent decades.

East – Numerical (uninhabited)
Mined out and all mining operations reclaimed.

West – Numerical (uninhabited)
Mined out and all mining operations reclaimed.

Related subjects

Gallium Name
The first settled planet was named for its prodiguous amounts of bauxite and zinc which yielded a relatively enormous amount of gallium(III).

Gallium Corporation
Early seed ships brought the founders of mining operations that formalized as the Gallium corporation, named after its home planet and the first principle export. Expansionist in nature, the corporation expanded to a nearby system in the days before generation ships and eventually took to acquiring other struggling mining systems. When the Gallian System was mined out the corporation moved its headquarters to the Allium system, reducing staff to public relations and historical preservation.

Principle Salvage Operations
RCON – Engaging in resource maximization and salvage in the North gas giant region, based in Herb and Gallium

Montrose – Respurce maximization company based in Gallium but with significant slavage operations out of Herb.

SHOE – (Salvage Headquarters Open Everywhere) a small but successful salvage operation that showed salvage-only companies could survive. Based off Zactus.

Menemui – Resource maximization company based on Provi. Got into salvage by acquiring Herb-based salvage company Tiga.

XFCon – Spinoff from Gallium mining ops that baceme an independent resource maximization company out of Bask and Herb and operates some salvage ops.

Suara – Gallium based salvage operation with significant operations in the North gas giant system.

Titor – Founded in Elektra engaging in Resource maximization then expanding to salvage and Energy harvesting now predominantly operating out of Malaikat. One of the largest operations in the Galian system.