The Story of Human Exploration and Discovery Beyond the Orion Arm
The materials contained herein unless otherwise noted are the copyright of J. Austin Wilde, 1991 to 2009, all rights reserved.
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Designs
AMC Registry of Vessels
Sagittarius Colonial Atlas
Ahriman (HM+31 0938 B)
Amethyst (HB+32 3331 B)
Angelique (HM-50 2602 B)
Apollonia/Phyrigia (HD+35 2475 A)
Aquilla (SAG+56 0107)
Arkhangelsk (HM+41 2746)
Atlantis (HM+52 0225)
Aurora (HM+47 2620 A)
Avignon (HM+31 3323)
Baker's End (SAG-36 0528)
Bellarmine (HM+36 1662 A)
Bellissimo (HM+40 2827)
Beowulf (HM+39 5516 A)
Bounty (HB+38 0524 A)
Buran (HD+32 1678)
Cauldron (SAG+47 1522)
Charybdis (HB+56 0404 B)
Concordia (HM+00 2422 A)
Cora's World (HM-40 2634)
Daedelus (SAG+45 4907 A)
Demeter (HM+31 3563)
Destiny (HD+47 0309)
Dustbowl/New Deseret (SAG-42 4503 B)
Frontiera (HD+40 1336)
Frostpile (SAG+43 2208)
Fury (HM+53 0102 A)
Gateway (HM+00 0000)
Goldrush (SAG+33 2643)
Gulag (HD+40 4019)
Hecate's Hate (HM+32 3972)
Hyperborea (SAG+44 1855 B)
Ice Station Mike (HD+42 3267)
Ice Station Oscar (HD+42 5807)
Inshallah (HM+53 0608)
Jena (HB-33 4139 A)
Jewel/Sulfur Flats (HM+41 0955 A & B)
Jin Xian (HM-45 4415)
Jove/Fuzhou (SAG+49 2911 A & B)
Libertad (HD-46 2312)
Marino (HD-31 4687)
Midgard/Muspellheim (HD+54 1018)
Mirabilis (HM-45 1718)
Neu Bavaria (HM+31 7329)
New Anchorage (HD+35 3455 A)
New Ares (HM+57 0405 A)
New Havana (HM+55 1217)
New Tanstaafl (HM+43 3626 A)
New Taranto (HB+31 2685 A)
New Zion (HD+47 0954)
Paydirt (HM+36 2309)
Porto Fria (HM-52 2716 A)
Pu'huonua (HM+35 2017)
Research Station Victor (HB+55 1522)
Sakura (HM-31 0629)
Sandovar (HM+34 0139 A)
Santa Clara (SAG+31 0179 B)
Scherzo (SAG+55 2007 B)
Sheba's World/Neu Bayer (HD-51 1306 A)
Tanner's World (HB-32 1052)
Tartarus (HM+31 5806)
The Alamo (HM+34 0552 B)
Tortuga (HD-37 4529)
Toulon (SAG+55 0823 A)
Valhalla (HD+31 1168)
Viracocha (HM+31 1175 A)
Waypoint November (HM+31 1969 A)
Waypoint Omega (HM-06 1121 A)
Waypoint Tango (HD+41 4528 A)
Waypoint X-Ray (HD-66 1619)
Waypoint Yankee (HD+10 1721)
Waystation Alfa (HM+34 1207)
Xiamen (HM+48 2891 B)
Zhengzhou (HM-27 9791 B
Tartarus System, HM+31 5806
18 July 2361
Day 129 of a six month tour
The architect that designed the Lodestone and the shipwrights who built her made her for one thing: profit. For myself and the forty-seven other inmates of this aluminum and carbon-fiber prison, comfort wasn't even a secondary concern. We're cooped up like rats in one of the two spin habitat modules, spinning three times a minute to give us just six tenths of a gee so we can maintain our physical strength. And we need it. Even with all of the automation, the job's filled with back breaking work. Maintenance, repair, inspections, even man handling chunks of rock the pods bring in to the processing house directly for assay. Ceres Metals has always been an equal opportunity employer, but the last time I saw a woman that wasn't shaking what her momma gave her on a display or taped up to the top of my bunk was four months ago.
I get email, sure, and the occasional two minute video (company bandwidth permitting), but light speed lag's a good forty minutes out here, so all my conversations tend to be a bit one-sided. Not much to talk about anyway. If we're transiting to the next work site, we're ass-deep in work getting the machinery ready. If we're at a work site, well, we're working our asses off keeping the machinery running. Every minute of downtime costs us four thousand bucks, and that's coming straight out of our shares, so you bet your sweet ass that we don't let that happen too often. It's a lot of work, but it's all the same, all the time. I try to pull a split shift if I can - six hours in the processing house and six in the fuckup factory (the control room, that whole other Hab module we could be using for living space but don't). A change of scenery as well as a change of workmates does a world of good out here.
One thing I can never get over is the noise. You get hit with the smell first thing through the airtight door from the skiff, and float right into a miasma of sweat, bad breath, old socks, amine from the backup scrubbers, and God only knows what else. Your brain filters it out after a couple days. But the noise. When we're on a work site and those gigantic fucking bores are going... The vibrations carry through the whole ship. It's not loud, just constant and all encompassing. I swear, when I'm home I can hear it in my sleep.
Just one more run this tour. I tell you, it was looking pretty weak in the bonus situation for a bit. Demand from Higher was for the usual light stuff - lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, and silicon. It pays the bills, but not much else. We dug into this rock about twenty days out from home, and the next thing we know, the bores hit a vein of rare earths. Niobium, hafnium, europium, ytterbium, even some iridium. The Old Man didn't need to ask for instructions on that one. We pitched the cheap shit into an inflated bag polymerized from all the carbon we collected, and loaded up on the rare earths for as long as they held out. We're going out to make up for what we didn't harvest on that run, but it's all gravy now. Just as long as nothing breaks, in fifty-one days I will be home with a fat bonus check. I have no idea what I'll do with my share. As long as I don't do what all the other rockheads on this bucket do, which is piss it away on hookers and blow.
Yeah, right... Like that's gonna happen...