The Gas Station Part 4
Late April 2018
“... so that's our status at the moment.” Eric Hunt ended his small presentation. “We got kicked hard, but the big book of rules has been burned too. Oh... and we might be the ones who define the fate of ESA and JAXA for the next decades.”
21 astronauts were sitting around the large table together with Hunt, six of them were still in their beds because of their injuries. The only member of the Aurora expedition that had been injured badly and was at the table was Sarah Meier. Eric was still a bit dazed about how fast she had healed.
“Max, you organize everyone who is not hurt at all. You will get back to the moon and make a first survey which parts got damaged and what survived the attack intact.” Eric continued. “Everything that might be damaged must be checked before we can continue.”
Mac Raffa, one of the engineers that had arrived with the Ferdinand Magellan nodded, but Masuna Soetsu complained.
“What? I have to go out on the moon again right now?” he said with a wide grin, “can you not assign me a job together with our new cute one?”
He smiled at Sarah Meier and tried to pat her on her furred arm, but Sarah drew her arm away with lightning speed and hissed angrily. Masuno suddenly saw a series of sharp looking claws right above his hand.
“Oh damned” he shouted and drew his hand back carefully. “Why do the cute ones always get sharp claws!”
That made everyone at the table snicker, including Sarah Meier.
“Sarah, they said you should stay on the space station for a few more days to get used to... to everything. But you are not injured anymore, so get in contact with our host.” Eric said, “we will need additional support to plan our next steps. You can also ask them if they can help us checking the equipment on the moon later, or what other ideas they have.”
Sarah wasn’t in a good mood, but she nodded. At least Eric wasn’t keeping her out of the mission.
“Okay Eric, I will do so.”
Before Eric Hunt could continue, someone knocked at the door.
“Yes?” he shouted and a catgirl entered the room.
“Mr. Hunt, the police will arrive in a few minutes, we thought you wanted to be there.”
Cathy and Eric Hunt were looking at a control monitor while the large Camping Car slowly moved into Jengas airlock for trucks. It was the first time that an investigator from Space Patrol was coming to Jenga, normally the catgirls liked their privacy.
“Couldn’t you just close the airlock with one of these ‘atmospheric forcefields’ you see in Scifi” Eric asked, “It would allow us to watch our visitors from the Hangar itself!”
“We tried, we really tried” Cathy answered and chuckled. “But the forcefield sometimes failed when a car with gravity drive moved through. We decided to keep the normal airlock procedures until we can fix it.”
The car finally stopped moving and the airlock closed behind it. A few moments later the light on the inner door changed from red to green and the door opened.
“Lets greet our visitors” Cathy said and both of them entered the large airlock. The doors of the car were already opening and three people stepped out of the car.
“Hello,” Cathy said with a smile, “welcome to Catgirl Industries. My name is Cathy and this is Eric Hunt, the leader of the expedition from Earth.”
“Thank you Cathy” one of the three men answered, “my name is Arthur Nkomo. Great Justice sent me out here when we got the news what has happened.”
Cathy blinked a few times, she had expected someone from Space Patrol.
“And these two gentlemen” Arthur continued and looked left and right “are Mr. Juergen Schmidt of Europol and Mr. Ichikawa Zenigata of the Japanese National Police Agency.”
“Good to see you here” Cathy said as she looked over the group. All three of them looked a little bit tired. “I can show you your rooms, we can give you a short summary what happened here on Pan afterwards. And we already brought some parts of the attack weapon to Jenga, I am sure you want to see them.”
Arthur looked at his two associates from Earth.
“I think we will start talking with some of the astronauts who remember the attack. And maybe a few of the catgirls who were in the control room at this time.” Arthur said flatly. “Oh, and we would like to see all the parts of the weapon system tomorrow!”
“I am not sure we will have all parts today” Cathy disagreed, “it might take us a few days to assemble them all.”
Arthur sighed.
“Cathy, can I just talk to you alone for a moment?”
Cathy looked a bit puzzled but led Arthur into a small utility room.
“Cathy, you have been doing work with Great Justice before and you might be pretty happy that everything has been going well since the terror strike... let me just tell you this will not continue for long.”
“What do you mean?” Cathy asked.
“While this joined investigation is great, the pressure is increasing. Just look up ‘Boskonian war, second round’ on the Interwave. And lets not forget that there are already politicians in the EU and Japan who talk about ‘these Fen terrorists’ and ‘protect the peaceful interests of Earth in space’. We are all working on borrowed time.”
Cathy looked unhappy, but did not interrupted Arthur.
“We might have only a few days until we have to show them something... and only a few weeks until this whole thing turns into a major crisis.” Arthur said flatly. “Or war.”
Cathy gulped.
“So please do me a favor and hurry up, we need a look at this weapon system,” Arthur added quietly, “we still have a chance to prevent a disaster.”
“Good morning,” Jürgen Schmidt said as he sat down at the breakfast table in the Cafeteria. Both Arthur Nkomo and Ichikawa Zenigata were already there, looking up from their breakfast. “I am sorry that I am late, but the shower controls were... unusual.”
“Just sit down with us,” Arthur said with a grin, “things like this happen to everyone up in orbit for the first time.” He already knew that the cats from Jenga were a bit mad about their showers.
They had started interviewing some of the astronauts yesterday, but had to pause because everyone had becoming too tired.
“So how do we continue today, there are still quite a few astronauts left we have not talked to.” their japanese co-worker asked, “And we also need to talk with the catgirls who were in the control room during the attack.”
Arthur nodded.
“Maybe we should split up” Arthur suggested, “this way we get all the interviews done this morning and can focus on the technical evidence afterwards. I know they want us to interview all of them, but we should hurry up.”
“Good idea” Jürgen Schmidt replied, “we split up for the Astronauts and catgirls, but do the interview with the two AIs of the station together. I bet they will have more facts for us.”
“And then the alarm hit me, moments before the projectile impacted. I didn’t even had time to warn anyone, I am just happy that the shot hit. Unfortunately the other turrets were not in the right position.”
Arthur nodded and made a few additional nodes.
“Thank you Serina,” he said, “if you recognize something that might be important, contact us immediately. Cortana, do you want to add anything more?”
“No, I think you got everything we experienced during the attack” Cortana answered. “And you also have the full video of it for later analysis. If you have any questions about details just ask, we are both present all over the station.”
“We will do so” Arthur assured, “but lets have a look at the physical evidence now. I hope you have some news for us!”
Serina’s Avatar smiled and the door of the room opened to let in an Exocomp.
“Follow him to the main hall, I think the catgirls have assembled all the evidence there. Its not far.”
The main hall was just a few corridors away, a huge room separated into two areas by a large glasslike wall. As the group entered, a catgirl approached them.
“Hello, Cortana told me you would come. I am Vivio, I can show you the current status of our investigation.”
“Thank you” Jürgen Schmidt replied, “we are curious what you got. Will Cathy join us too?”
“Oh, Cathy is still sleeping. She organized the team that brought most of the fragments into this hall” Vivio explained.
“But let me give you an overview what we have found.
The origin of the attack is far outside the ecliptics, it took the projectile hours to arrive at Pan.”
The room darkened and a holographic projection of Saturn and its moons appeared, marking Pan with a bright yellow ring. A tiny red dot floated far away of the planet.
“The red dot marks the place where the weapon had been placed” Vivio continued and the a small dot separated from the existing one and raced towards Saturn. Moments later the original marker began to expand into a red sphere.
“As you can see, only moments after the shot the weapon platform exploded. When we found it, it had had been scattered over an area of more than a lightsecond diameter!”
The projection zoomed onto the spherical area to show a widely distributed debris field.
“We placed reference buoys around the field and began to collect the parts, after recording their vector and spin. At the moment we have at least 78% of the original weapon system and all parts larger than a centimeter!”
“What’s about the other 20%” Ichikawa Zenigata asked.
“We are still looking for tiny splinters” Vivio admitted. “You could put Earth and Moon into this area without changing the Moons orbit, I think you can understand the problem to get them all. But we already have a rough image of the weapon system.”
The projection changed again, the particles raced back to the center until the frame of some kind of machine appeared. There were quite a few holes in the machine, marking places where the reconstruction wasn’t complete.
“This is the best reconstruction we have been able to come up with over the last day. As you can see our weapon system would barely fit into the trailer of a large truck or shipping container The structure suggests its some kind of mixed rail- and coilgun system, with some unidentified support infrastructure.
Still, we have a few parts we are not sure how they fit into the whole picture. There are quite a few metal loops and even some thick metal ropes, but no place to use the rope in the weapon.
The most interesting parts are splitters that might have been part of the rails for the projectile. They are made of a complicated mixture of elements, Cortana thinks they might be a hardtech superconductor. But as many parts of the weapon, they have been waved!”
Arthur nodded slowly.
“Thank you Vivio for this introduction. We will have to look at some of the parts ourselves, to get a feeling what might be important. Please run more parts through an analysis in your labs, maybe you will find something important.”
“We are just preparing the particle accelerator in the labs” Vivio agreed. “If you want to get a special part out of the room just call an Exocomp. But maybe it might be better you suit up and examine everything in vacuum, we don’t want to contaminate the parts.”
Arthur Nkomo looked at his two colleagues from Earth.
“Okay Gentlemen, lets find the needle in the haystack!”
“The solution is here, somewhere... I feel it!” Zenigata murmured as he twisted the controls of the holographic projection system again. “I just need to find it.”
When the catgirl had shown him and his colleagues the ‘reconstruction’, they had forgotten to mention that it was just one of the reconstructions they did together with their AI Cortana. One of dozens, each of them with an assigned probability value... and all of them with quite some guessing involved.
While the central mechanism was easy to recognize, the outer support structure was a mess. Too many tiny pieces that could be assembled into different configurations and none of them fitting perfectly.
They had all looked at the pieces for the last three days, giving small samples to the catgirls who provided an analysis of the material. The only big discovery was still the waved but hardtech superconductor.
A mixture of seven elements in a complex three dimensional lattice. Waved for some unknown additional effect. The catgirls never had seen something like this in Fenspace, it was just too difficult to make in large quantities. Superconductivity was easier to achieve with Handwavium.
They had sent a sample of it to Prometheus Forge with a Warsie courier, maybe they would be able to learn more about it this way.
“Just a few more combinations... I should really go to bed like Arthur and Jürgen” he said as he assembled the larger pieces of the support structure of the weapon into a new pattern. “No, thats still wrong, something is missing.”
A door behind him opened and a catgirl he didn’t recognized entered and sat down on the bank next to him.
“Hi, I am Mizuki” she introduced herself, “are you Ichikawa Zenigata?”
“Just a moment” he murmured and quickly finished his latest reconstruction attempt. “Damned, its wrong again... oh, hello Mizuki... yes, I am Ichikawa Zenigata from the Japanese National Police Agency.”
“Its already very late, ” she asked, looking curiously at him. “you are still working on your puzzle here?”
“Yes, it is late” Zenigata replied and nodded, “but someone has to get this job done. And I am pretty sure I saw something in this data... I just have to grab it!”
He smiled at the catgirl at his right and grabbed the controls in front of him again, starting another variation of his reconstruction attempts.
“May I ask you a question?” the catgirl asked and Zenigata sighed mentally.
“Another one? Okay.” he said, maybe getting a short break wasn’t that bad.
“Have you ever tried to throw handcuffs?”
Zenigata stared at Mizuki for a moment, then he started laughing loudly.
“No, I definitely have not” he said after he managed to stop laughing, “I think they are not good for hitting something at range.”
“Yes, I think you are right” the catgirl said and nodded, “a few of us tested it yesterday. They don’t fly well at all, but I thought you would know a trick!”
“Oh, you should not forget I am from Earth” he explained. “I had never any contact with Handwavium before this mission. I cannot throw handcuffs in any useful way, it just cannot be done.”
The catgirl looked thoughtful for a moment and nodded. Zenigata went back to work.
“Oh look there, this fits right into that hole” Mizuki suddenly said and pointed at the small holographic panel. The gesture based interface reacted instantly, shooting a few objects through the rest of the holographic image and scattering it all over the screen.
“Ups...”
“I am trying to work here” Zenigata said and rolled with his eyes. “I am happy for some company, but please do not touch the console.”
Just as he wanted to continue his work, the catgirl jumped up. “I will get myself a coffee. Do you want one too?”
She didn’t even waited for a response and raced out of the room.
‘Strange girl... but maybe I can now get my work done.’ he thought.
But just after a minute the catgirl was back with two large mugs of hot coffee.
“Here, I brought you a coffee too!” she said and put one of the mugs in front of him, directly into his holographic console. The catgirl grinned and sniffed at her coffee, purring loudly.
Zenigata took a few deep breaths to stay calm while looking at Mizuki who was squirrelly moving back and forth.
‘This one drank too much coffee’ he thought and put his coffee mug to the side, trying to salvage his current work while keeping an eye on his guest.
The catgirl suddenly began to giggle.
“Hey, I know where this part belongs to” she said and tried to reach for the control console again, but Zenigata quickly grabbed her wrist.
“What did I say about the console” he asked with a smirk, but Mizuki just giggled and instantly reached out with her other hand. It took a short brawl until he finally managed to hold her.
“You are a really naughty cat” he said, carefully trying not to begin laughing. Mizuki smiled happily and began to purr.
‘I am doomed’ he thought, ‘cat is on coffee overload and is enjoying this game. I need a creative solution to this, otherwise I will be always the Spoilsport from Earth here.’
He looked around and suddenly he began to grin himself. Carefully he twisted her arms on the back of the bench.
“So you think you have already won our little brawl” he asked and Mizuki grinned widely, visibly enjoying the attention she got.
- click* *click*
“Maybe then you shouldn’t have brought the cop your handcuffs” Zenigata continued as he locked her hands together behind a beam that was holding the back of the bench.
“Hee... cheater!” Mizuki protested as she failed to free her hands again.
“You see, now we can both work on our big puzzle without constantly fighting for the controls” Zenigata said, putting his left arm around the shoulders of the catgirl. “If you have a good idea you just have to say it. Sometimes two hands are one hand too much.”
Too much...
He blinked a few times as he looked at the holo screen in front of him.
“YES... too much! Thats it! Too much!” he shouted. Mizuki just gave him a puzzled look.
“You see, I have been trying to find the right place in the machine for a group of metal loops, but it always looks strange” he tried to explain excitedly. “One of them is not from the machine, thats why!”
He waved to an Exocomp who was sitting on a chair close to him. “Hey you... get me this seven loops and put them into a small box each” he said and marked them on the holoscreen, “I have to get them to your labs!”
The Exocomp beeped happily and rushed through the airlock into the room with the weapon system parts.
“Ahh, that was the key” Zenigata said and smiled at the catgirl. “Thank you very much.”
The Exocomp was quickly back with a stack of boxes. Zenigata took the boxes and rushed towards the door.
“I have to bring this to the labs, I will be back in a moment!” he said and left.
“Hey!” Mizuki shouted and looked around. “Our coffee will get cold.”
She tried to get her hands free again, then looked at the Exocomp.
“Do something, help me!”
The Exocomp beeped an acknowledgement and rushed out of the room, only to bring back two small hot plates. It snickered and put them below the coffee pots, then sat down on Mizuki’s lap.
“Traitor” the catgirl murmured.
“So what do you got?” Zenigata asked impatiently and the catgirl in front of him snickered.
“Hey, I just finished a first preliminary analysis... don’t expect all the details, I will have to run your samples through more test, maybe we will even put them into the accelerator later” she answered. “But I can tell you a few things about them.”
Zenigata nodded quickly.
“These six loops are made from the same high quality steel” the catgirl started explaining, “or at least from a very similar batch of steel. I have not identified all components of the alloy, but its high quality metal. Oh, and they are have been waved with some kind of stealth strain.
This seventh Loop is different, very different. The steel is simpler and contains mostly alloy components you can easily get in Fenspace. There is also some unidentified particles in the mixture... and its wavium looks like a typical space-proof steel wave.”
“Yes, YES!” Zenigata cried out. “I got it, I got it!”
“I hope its not contagious” the catgirl joked, “do you want to share what you got?”
“This might be our most important evidence at the moment!” Zenigata stated. “Its a part that does NOT belong to the weapon system we found. It might be a hint about who or what deployed that weapon system!”
Zenigata began to quickly walk up and down the room.
“We need a more specific analysis of this as soon as possible. Everything could be important, everything! And we need it very quickly before the trail gets even colder!”
“I will get together a team and start working on it at once, we should have more evidence tomorrow morning” the catgirl promised and Zenigata nodded.
“Good, very good... I have to call my co workers, they have learn about this right now!”
“It late in the night for you three, try to calm down a bit” the catgirl suggested, “you are behaving like someone on an overdose of coffee!”
“Coffee...” Zenigata blinked a few times. “Coffee? Oh dear, I forgot about Mizuki! I will have to go, continue with your analysis! And call my co-workers to meet me!”
Two sleepy looking men and a catgirl entered the room where Zenigata were again sitting in front of the holo-controls, the head of the dozing Mizuki on his lap.
“Ahh, good that you are here” he said excited and activate the holo emitters. “You really have to see what I found!”
Arthur Nkomo and Jürgen Schmidt looked to each and then at the sleeping catgirl.
“Maybe you want to sent her away first?” Jürgen suggested, but Ichikawa Zenigata shook his head.
“I owe her a little bit, just let her sleep.” he said with a grin, then he pointed to the projector.
Cathy just grinned about his comment.
“Mizuki also gave me the hint I needed to spot an important piece of our puzzle.”
The projection of the weapon system rotated and a number of metal loops were highlighted.
“As you know the reconstruction of the central weapon is pretty good, but we have some uncertainty in the support structure below it. Our last guess was that we were missing a few parts, but we were wrong!”
The highlighted loops suddenly moved, most of them distributing themselves in a new regular pattern and one of them moving away from the weapon.
“Thats because this” Zenigata said and hold up a small plastic box, “this loop is not from the weapon system, its from the vehicle that transported the weapon system!”
Suddenly the two other inspectors were not looking sleepy anymore.
“Do you already have a preliminary analysis of it?” Arthur asked.
“Yes, I have. Its most likely steel that has been created here in space from asteroid ore. Its quality is much lower than the materials of the weapon system. It has been waved to be vacuum resistant with a common strain of handwavium. And...”
“And what?” Jürgen Schmidt asked, rolling his eyes about Zenigata’s show.
“And it has been contaminated during the waving. With some tiny amounts of red dust, dust from a planetary surface not far from here!”
“Mars... you want to tell us the transporter has been waved on Mars!” Arthur finally said. “This is really an interesting piece of evidence, the first one that might be useful for us.”
Zenigata nodded again.
“Yes. The catgirls from the lab told me a few minutes ago that they don’t think the steel has been used for a larger purpose built spaceship, but it could be from a waved vehicle.”
“Must be a pretty large waved vehicle, even most trucks are smaller than the weapon system.” Jürgen noted. “A truck or maybe a boat. Or a large plane.”
“Thats what I am hoping too,” Zenigata replied, “maybe someone who sells vehicles like this will recognize this part!”
“Sounds like looking for a needle in the haystack again” Jürgen joked, “don’t you think we should first uncover more evidence now that we got a hint what we are looking for?”
“No, we should move to Mars NOW... before the trail goes cold” Zenigata opposed Jürgens plan, “we cannot wait here.”
“We have to restock our Camping Car before we can think about flying back” Arthur said flatly. “And we would not be able to start anyways until we all got a good night of sleep. You know, nearly 17 hours of flying is more than a short trip.”
“I would like to help you” Cathy interrupted them for the first time, “we could easily borrow you one of our cars with a catgirl driving it... but even for a car its more than 11 hours to reach Mars. Thats a lot of travel time.”
Mizuki suddenly lounged and grinned.
“He could use the pinball,” she suggested, “it can cover the distance in seven hours.”
“You cannot seriously suggesting using that thing” Cathy said and rolled with her eyes. “Its tiny!”
“Excuse me,” Zenigata interrupted the two catgirls, “but what is the Pinball?”
Mizuki sat up and smiled.
“The Pinball of Doom is a prototype vehicle I have built with a few friends last year” she explained. “Its large enough for two persons and its incredible fast!”
“That sounds just perfect” Zenigata agreed, but Cathy was still skeptic.
“Wait until you have seen the beast” she suggested and stood up.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, I proudly present the PINBALL OF DOOM!”
Both catgirls and the three inspectors were standing around an unremarkable sphere of two and a half meter diameter. Smooth metal everywhere, no windows and not even small bumps.
“This is the spaceship you were talking about?” Arthur asked. “You are kidding us, right? This thing might be a nice toy or a drone, but an interplanetary spaceship?”
Mizuki hissed angrily at Arthur and stroke the surface of the metal sphere.
“You should not say something like this, vehicles have feelings too!” she spat out.
“Mizuki, I know you don’t build AI-equipped ships.” Arthur said and sighed.
“This is a personal built prototype! How do you know it has no AI?”
“Does it have an AI?”
Mizuki mumbled.
“No, it has not... but they still got feelings. And its the fastest craft on the whole station!”
She knocked on the surface of the sphere and half of it slowly clapped back to reveal the interior with the two seats. There wasn’t much more free space in the sphere except for the seats and their controls.
“Okay, I can see that this is a tight solution” Zenigata said with a grin. “At least the hatch is transparent from the inside. Why didn’t you built it a bit larger?”
“We cannot do so without an AI” Cathy quickly answered. “This is even a bit larger than we normally can do, it still has a few quirks we got rid of later. But Mizuki is right, its a damned fast vehicle. And in theory it could bring you to Mars.”
“In theory?” Zenigata asked carefully.
“Look at it” Arthur said, “its not even a car, its a tin can. Do you think anyone would want to sit inside this for eight hours?”
“Hey, the prewave space capsules of US and and Russia were smaller” Mizuki complained. She looked at Zenigata. “And you are not that large, it should work out fine.”
Cathy looked at Mizuki.
“If you are that excited about the craft, YOU will pilot it for our guest until you are back on the station.”
Mizuki blinked a few times.
“But... but... but we had to take out the coffee machine to get space for the fuel tanks!”
“Its your idea, you are responsible for it,” Cathy said and shook her head. “I am sure you will be able to find a thermos jug before you leave.”
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