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Flashes. Light distortions. A bluish vortex of gases, light, and energy took shape. The wormhole opened. Through the narrow viewing slit of the Starlancer Max, the brightness seemed to stream into the cockpit in a much more concentrated form. I squinted my eyes. Then I dove into the vortex with the spaceship and followed the tunnel into the Pyro system.

It was time to begin. An expedition into the unknown to find minerals that would help solve the rain crisis. Friedrich Winters had initiated the expedition. After meeting with him and Hermieoth on the planet ArcCorp, preparations began. Friedrich had scouted out a remote island on the moon Fairo that we wanted to use as our starting point. I had contacted Citizens for Prosperity to get support. And indeed, they once again provided me with the Starlancer Max, equipped with basic mining equipment, provisions, and a ROC ground mining vehicle. I also had additional cargo on board. On behalf of the Overshield organization, I was bringing relief supplies to the Pyro system.

The wormhole tunnel changed color from light blue to reddish brown. Pyro was getting closer. I was already within the influence of its flare star. What would await me in this lawless star system? Although we had agreed to keep the expedition secret, we had already attracted far too much attention. I thought worriedly about the message that had been published in the CommRelay.

Hello stranger,
Everyone is in an uproar about the rain crisis and is fighting tooth and nail for valuable resources and profits. But perhaps the profit isn’t where everyone is looking. I’ve heard rumors that an entrepreneur from Stanton is apparently putting together an expedition team to find something lucrative in Pyro. Sounds interesting to me. If you find out more about what this Winters and his team are up to, let me know. Create an entry in the Datacrypt under the string “trUeffeltalk” with a time and an encrypted frequency where you can be reached, and we’ll see if there’s anything to be gained.
But I smell opportunity.
Signed, Trüffelschwein

Who was this Trüffelschwein? His intentions certainly didn’t seem friendly. Was there an ambush waiting for me? At that moment, the wormhole spat me out.

Brown gas clouds, a sea of shattered asteroids, and fragments of old space stations surrounded me. The Starlancer snaked its way through the debris field. I nervously glanced at the radar. No contacts. I immediately set course for Gaslight Station and activated the quantum drive. In one fell swoop, the metallic-shimmering Starlancer disappeared from the asteroid field and was in the quantum tunnel. Only now did I relax a little and fall back into the pilot’s seat.

*

A few days later, I was approaching the moon Fairo. The delivery of aid supplies from Overshield went surprisingly smoothly. With that job done, I could concentrate fully on the expedition. However, there was one more thing to do before we could start searching for minerals. I hoped the others wouldn’t be too upset about it. After all, everyone was a little nervous about the Trüffelschwein.

Flames danced around the Starlancer as I entered the moon’s atmosphere. The air was breathable and the temperatures mild. That’s why Friedrich had chosen the moon as the starting point for our expedition. However, I wasn’t quite sure where I needed to go. It was nighttime and I could hardly see any landmarks. The island was clearly visible on the map Friedrich had sent. However, the view from the cockpit window looked different. I was literally groping in the dark. On the off chance, I flew to a point that seemed most likely to fit.

After a while, I picked up radar signals. One of them was the Silver Arrow, Friedrich Winters’ spaceship. I was in the right place. After landing, I was greeted joyfully. Hermieoth and Brubacker had already arrived. Brubacker was unloading two ATLS GEO mining mechs he had brought with him.

As we were talking, a Zeus suddenly thundered over the camp. Everyone looked up nervously.

“Damn! I thought this place was so remote that no one would find us here,” said Hermieoth.

“Don’t worry, it’s mine. That’s Xine. He wants to meet Brubacker,” I replied.

Brubacker looked at me angrily.

“You can’t just give our location to someone who’s not part of the expedition.”

“Xine is trustworthy and discreet. I’ve worked with him many times before.”

It was obvious that the group was not enthusiastic. But I had a deal with Xine. He had gotten me something, and in return, I had arranged the meeting with Brubacker. And the reason Xine wanted to talk to Bru seemed to me to be too urgent to delay. We gathered in the Starlancer’s mess hall.

“You’re hard to find, Mr. Brubacker,” said Xine.

“For good reason. Why do you want to meet me?”

Xine said he had been hired to track down the reporter who had published the article about the killer satellite. The issue was likely to resurface. He had a video that showed a killer satellite. I knew the video. It showed a satellite in orbit around a celestial body. I didn’t know if it was really a killer satellite. But I didn’t want to ignore the matter either.

The whole situation was strange. Xine didn’t really say what he wanted. He hemmed and hawed, unable or unwilling to name his client and the source of the video. He only said that he was following a lead. Brubacker was also very reticent. The whole conversation was strange. What were Xine’s intentions? I wondered if it was a mistake to bring him here and reveal our location to him.

At some point, we started talking about ENOS. We gave Xine the names Thane McMarshall and Kjeld Stormanson. That seemed to satisfy him. We warned him how dangerous the powers behind ENOS were and that the matter was not yet settled.

“Be careful, Xine,” I warned him. “Maybe your client wants to track down the people who uncovered the whole scandal and take revenge.”

“Don’t wet your pants,” Xine replied.

That’s when Friedrich the Kraken burst in.

“Mr. Xine, I expect more respect from you. You can’t talk like that to people who are committed to the cause, who put themselves in danger and uncovered the scandal.”

The situation threatened to get out of hand. I had gotten us into this mess, now I had to get us out of it.

“Maybe we should take this opportunity to check our equipment,” I interjected. “If anything is missing, Xine can get it for us. He’s really good at that. He’s organized all kinds of things for me and done business for me without me having to show up. It’s damn helpful when someone like Ray Keaton is your business partner. And Ray never found out that he was indirectly doing business with me.”

Together, we took inventory in the cargo hold. We had everything we needed. Xine couldn’t or didn’t want to stay and flew away. We were on our own.

“I don’t feel comfortable at all when someone who isn’t part of the expedition knows our location,” Friedrich concluded.

I wasn’t entirely comfortable with it either. I trusted Xine, but I couldn’t convince my friends of his reliability. And I wasn’t entirely sure what path Xine was taking. A bad taste remained.

“Are you driving the ROC Zero?”

Friedrich’s words snapped me out of my thoughts. He had divided us up among the vehicles and we began to explore the moon.

We quickly found the first cluster of minerals. However, examination revealed that it was beradom. It was not one of the minerals needed for research. Friedrich, Brubacker, and Hermieoth continued searching while I mined the cluster with the ROC. Beradom may not be the most valuable mineral, but it could help finance the expedition.

One by one, I began to process the 19 stones with the laser. Others might find this task monotonous, but I found it relaxing. I heard the others talking on the radio. I remained silent and surrendered myself completely to my situation. It was almost meditative to listen to the hum of the laser, to see the stones break apart and the minerals being sucked up by the tractor beam.

As I worked, dawn turned the black night sky pink. The gas giant Pyro V rose like a gigantic matte pink disc behind the horizon, followed by the star Pyros, which looked tiny in comparison. It was a breathtaking sight. We were light years away from the central star, from Stanton, from civilization. And that’s exactly how it felt. It was exactly what I was looking for. Isolation on alien worlds. A life on the frontier.

After I had mined all the stones, I drove over to the others. They had found more obsidian, but the rock was too massive for the ROC. We decided to return to our ships. Friedrich and Brubacker were much faster in the Cyclon than I was in the ROC. Hermieoth was even faster on the hoverbike.

The ROC bumped painfully over the uneven ground. It struggled through the red sand, over rocks and tufts of grass, shaking me uncomfortably. After a while, my back started to hurt. However, the view made up for all the pain. I looked out at the sea and felt like I was looking into eternity. The pink sea merged with the pink sky on the horizon. It was a seamless transition that blurred the line between above and below.

At some point, I found myself standing in front of a small lake. Our spaceships were parked on the other side. It wasn’t far; I could almost have thrown a stone across to the other side. And the water didn’t look deep either. On the other hand, the way around it was quite long. I was tired, shaken up, my back hurt. In the Greycat MTC commercial, they had shown it driving through water. Why shouldn’t the Greycat ROC be able to do that, I thought to myself. So I decided to take the direct route through the water.

I slowly steered the ROC across the shore. The large balloon tires felt their way into the water, displacing it and sinking deeper. It looked good. The tires were only halfway in the water, and the ROC was moving steadily forward. A small bow wave sloshed in front of the vehicle. Suddenly there was a loud bang.

When I opened my eyes again, the ROC was lying upside down next to me. One wheel had been torn off and the cargo container was lying next to it. I myself was lying two meters away in shallow water. Presumably, the energy cell had leaked and exploded. The brackish water had probably not done it any good.

Hermieoth picked me up with his Asgard. From the side hatch, I was able to use the tractor beam to rescue the cargo container with the minerals inside. At least that was something. The ROC itself was lost. Now we still had the two GEOs and the hand mining lasers.

*

Spät in der Nacht, als alle im Bett waren und schliefen, ging ich nochmal raus. Ein braungelber Gas-Schleier zog sich über den nächtlichen Himmel und spiegelte sich im Wasser des Sees, an dem unsere Raumschiffe standen. Friedrich hatte eine tollen Platz ausgesucht. Er hatte wirklich ein Gespür für schöne Orte. Vermutlich eine Eigenschaft, die er als Chef von Nordlicht Aviation brauchte und die zum Erfolg seiner Scenic Cruises führte.

Ich sog den Moment in mich ein. Es war wirklich ein krasser Gegensatz. Pyro war so wunderschön und zugleich so gefährlich. Ein System der Gegensätze, ein System, das von den meisten falsch verstanden wurde. Ja, es war gesetzlos, aber trotzdem gab es hier Menschen, die in Frieden und Freiheit leben wollten. Freie Völker, für die es sich lohnte, zu kämpfen.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)