---

Daniel's stomach jumped up into his chest when his dropship was jettisoned from the yawning belly of the Crucis, the freighter starship that had transported him across nearly 50 light years of space to the very edge of human-explored space. He could not see it through the vessel's thick hull, but another four dropships had jettisoned from the Crucis immediately after. Those four vessels tracked over and joined with Daniel's dropship to form a pentagon formation.

Daniel, already fair-skinned, felt his face go cold and pale as he dry heaved from the initial lurch out of the freighter. The dropship pilot heard Daniel gagging and turned around in his seat to see what the vessel's lone passenger was doing.

"Do not even think about throwing up in my dropship," the pilot remarked unsympathetically. "There's nothing messier than vomit in zero-gee. Wait 'til we get on the surface to toss your cookies."

"Fock off," Daniel snarled in his Afrikaner accent. "I'm paying you lot good money to ride in this shitcan and I'll puke where I damn well please."

The dropship pilot rolled his eyes and returned his attention to the crowded console splayed out before him in the dropship's cockpit. He flipped a few switches and took the vessel's joystick in his hand to make minor adjustment's the dropship's orientation in space.

Daniel took a few deep breaths to settle his stomach before turning his attention to the cockpit windshield. He unstrapped himself from the hull-mounted seat and pushed himself over to the cockpit. He braced himself against the back of the co-pilot's seat and gazed out on the otherworldly panorama through the dropship's scratched polycomposite windshield. For the first time, Daniel laid eyes upon his new home: SEVI-T3 -- Ember.

The dropship was in low orbit above the shaded half of the planet, moving rapidly toward Ember's sunlit hemisphere. The planet's orange-yellow sun was rising above the vast curved horizon, setting the hazy atmosphere ablaze with orange light. Directly below the dropship on the planet's surface, the peaks of giant hoodoos and mesas glowed vermilion against the darkness of the low-lying country that had not yet seen the first light of day. In the warm light of this alien dawn, everything on the surface looked to be on fire. Ember's first explorers had named this planet well.

"For the love of God, don't throw up in the cockpit," the pilot demanded upon noticing Daniel out of the corner of his eye. "Aerobraking is stressful enough without a bunch of vomit splattered against the windshield."

"Give it a rest with the puke. But what's this aerobraking about? What's so bad about that?"

"Aerobraking just means using air drag to slow us down to a halfway reasonable speed. We've slowed down quite a bit from interstellar transit, but we still have gobs of momentum to shave off before we can even think about landing," the dropship's co-pilot explained.

"We're about a minute away from hitting this planet's atmosphere at 26,000 miles an hour," the pilot chimed in. "You do the math."

"Relax," the co-pilot cooed mainly for Daniel's benefit. "We've done this about a hundred times before. Nothing we can't handle."

At that moment, Daniel's attention was captured by a flickering blue light to his left. Down below in Ember's skies, a monstrous thunderhead billowed high into the planet's atmosphere. The stormcloud's roiling contours flashed with bright, blue sparks of violent lightning within, giving proof to the ferocity of the storm.

"Unless we hit one of those," the co-pilot added as he watched the massive storm drift past.

A pair of dropships had passed over Daniel's vessel; two of the five that comprised Daniel's flotilla. These were larger than the one in which Daniel rode; cargo-variant dropships designed to carry heavy freight to and from a planet's surface. Reaction jets on the outer hulls of these dropships pulling ahead of Daniel's flashed here and there with small jets of blue fire - fine adjustments to the angle and orientation of the dropships in preparation for aerocapture. Daniel could only hope that the pilots of these vessels knew what they were doing, for each of those dropships contained a sizeable portion of his remaining fortune. All it would take is a load shift inside the hull of any of those cargo dropships to potentially ruin him.

//Barosensors indicate we're 30 seconds from the upper atmosphere. Making final adjustments, over,// the staticky voice of another dropship came in over the radio. The pilot of Daniel's vessel delicately thumbed the joystick in response.

//Ten seconds.//

"Hold on!" The co-pilot barked. Daniel's fingers dug into the back of the seat with white-knuckle force.

The dropship rattled slightly after ten seconds had passed, and then began to tremble. Within a few more seconds, the trembling had increased into vigorous vibration punctuated with several violent jolts. The panoramic view of Ember's horizon was engulfed in a sheet of fire roiling off the dropship's underside. Nothing but white and yellow fire could be seen beyond the windshield for what might have been the longest five minutes of Daniel's life. But when the flames of atmospheric entry eventually subsided, Daniel was presented with a view of a planet no human had seen in thirty years.

The dropships soared above an utterly alien landscape. Hills and plains covered in bright pink-red vegetation rolled for hundreds of miles, much of which crawled with teeming herds of alien wildlife. Swarms of bipedal grazers scattered across the landscape as the dropship formation screamed overhead, while lumbering browsers as large as a train car simply looked up to the human craft with disinterest. The vast array of alien life passing underneath reminded Daniel of the wildlife preserves in South Africa where he had taken girls on lavish excursions. After hundreds of years of development, hunting, poaching, and habitat degredation, the animal populations in those African preserves had been so decimated that a safari tour group was lucky to see even a single zebra or buffalo. But even from a few thousand feet in the air, stampeding throngs of alien life coursed across Ember's surface.

The ruddy savannas gave way to a series of towering rock spires that surrounded a massive rise marked by a cliff face several hundred feet high stretching as far as the eye could see. Sinuous canyons wound through these uplands before ending abruptly at the cliff face where they discharged their water in waterfalls so tall that the water only reached the low country below as clouds of fine mist.

"We're approaching the designated L-Z," the dropship pilot declared. "Prepare to touch-down."

The thruster pods on the dropships gradually swiveled down into a vertical take off and landing configuration, slowing the aircraft to a hover above the landscape. Gradually the dropships descended toward the surface with powerful downdrafts of their thrusters buffeting the alien vegetation below. As the dropships lowered onto the surface, stocky landing gear unstowed from the underside of the vessels to meet the ground. With a brief jolt, Daniel's dropship had touched down in the first human landing on Ember in thirty years. But there was no pause or pageantry to savor this historic moment. Without fanfare, the dropships opened their cargo bays to the alien atmosphere with a hiss-puff of pressurized being released. With the door open, Daniel left his pilots without so much as a farewell and set foot on Ember for the first time.

Already, cargo crews were at work. Stevedores strapped into freight exosuits lifted hundreds of pounds of cargo off of the dropships. Much to Daniel's relief, all of the cargo seemed to have survived the landing.

"Mister Weyrich," greeted a dark-skinned fellow of Polynesian descent - perhaps Maori - wearing pressed khaki trousers with a short-sleeve polo bearing a corporate logo. "I am Spencer Arahanga, here to represent Comtois Logistics. I trust you had a comfortable arrival. Now, our crew is ready to begin, but I'd like to first confirm with you that this site satisfies your needs."

"Here," Daniel declared, pointing down to the spongy vegetation under his feet. "We build here."

Roughnecks

Ulysses sat quietly in the driver seat of the UTV as he cracked open a bottle of vodka, taking a sip as the dropship carrying them rattled lightly. Jack had joined in the passenger seat, clutching the assault rifle they'd brought along, magazines for it held securely in pouches on the front of his tactical vest. It was hard to break old habits, and the same rang true for Ulysses, whom had the semiautomatic rifle that was essentially a old-model SKS rifle with an older holographic sight affixed resting between his legs, muzzle pointed up at the roof of the UTV. In the back was most of the gear for their little start-up operation, the rest residing elsewhere within the hefty dropship. Ulysses had little interest in paying the freight company to put him inside a passenger dropship when the pair could just ride down to the surface with their gear, especially considering the two had been through plenty of aerobraking maneuvers before.

The pair began to vibrate along with the rest of the ship as it began to make contact with the atmosphere, essentially treating the gas like a liquid and surfing across the sky in a way. Jack looked over at Ulysses, whom simply handed the bottle of vodka over, figuring he wanted a drink too. There was the very real potential this might be their last drink in the event that the heat shield failed, causing a catastrophic event wherein they'd likely be torn to shreds, burnt alive in an instant, or sucked out into the near-vacuum of high altitude Ember in an explosive decompression. To put it simply, one never completely relaxed during instances like this, even with the ever-increasing routineness of space travel.

Ulysses breathed a sigh of relief when they finally made it through, hearing the thrusters begin to be used once more. Soon after, the dropship came to a lurching halt at what was presumably the right place, the cargo bay door opening. Turning the vehicle's engine on, they reversed out of the craft as the light of Ember's star first came down upon them. It was a stunning place certainly, but Jack and Ulysses had little time to stand around and watch the view. They got to work immediately, helping unpack what little gear was left in the cargo ship, before it once more blasted off into the sky, becoming not but a dot before nothing was left but the vapor trail from its engines.

Almost immediately, Jack got out of the UTV, activated the sensor on the back of the UTV, then returned to the passenger seat. In unison, the two chambered rounds in their "self-defense" weapons, and got to work, scanning for baltuskite. The rest of their gear was shoved off under some tree-object, covered in simple netting designed to camouflage it whilst they were gone.

.

Carver spat and cursed as he kicked his faulty solar recharge station. His foot throbbed in reply but his aggressive frustration over rid any pain. The photovoltaic panels were clearly a bust and utterly useless. Agitated, angry, tired and dripping with sweat he violently brings down a heavy wrench upon the faulty device again and again in malicious outrage until he had robbed the useless machine of some of its shape. The angry grunts and groans of his wild outburst echoed out across the burning silent sands.

Now exhausted he slumped to the hot floor.
Lucky for him the rest of his gear was still good, the power station was the only thing damaged during transport. While important, it was not totally necessary. It just meant he had limited battery life for his hovercraft until his employer arrived. If things were to go to schedule that would only be just under a day away. His cursed bloody cheap ticket had seen him land here early before most others.

Not one to dwell unnecessarily on misfortune Carver salvages what he can and loads up the hovercraft. Using the old sniper rifle he had purchased with the upfront honour payment from Selenite Enterprises, Carver scoped out the landscape in the direction of his employers landing coordinates. It was not too far away. Caught ideally between to small bodies of water. It was where he was 'supposed' to have landed.

They had done right by him, Selenite Enterprises, with an upfront payment and a fair contract. So Carver would return the favour and get straight to work. He basically had nothing else to do in this vast empty arid wasteland anyway. With all his gear easily loaded onto his hovercraft, the motion camera properly wired up and the final adjustments and calibrations made to his mounted rail gun, Carver flew across the sands to his destination.

Before settling in he would take a few wide laps to assess their location and surroundings. Taking his time he pauses at the lakes for the refreshing cool water, he drops a trap at what could be a drinking spot for wildlife. Continuing on he often stops to survey even further with the use of his sniper scope. He had to know as much about this land as possible if he wanted to protect people from it.

Hours passed and Carver eventually needed rest. The sky lit up as dropships sporadically soared into the atmosphere, one after another in different locations far away. Carver resented getting here before the others, his first sleep would be an unruly one. He had very little comforts aboard his craft which he had set up his tent on. Worse were the comforts of the mind. He had checked over all his guns, his razor wire perimeter twice and the motion detecting camera three times, but still it was unnerving to be out on a strange new planet so far from home all alone with seemingly no one around. Help if it was needed, was probably nonexistent, and there was no telling what strange creatures may be lurking or awaiting in the dark.

Ferran stepped out into the unknown. As the dropship's engines roared behind him he knew that his connection to the safety of humanity was setting off back into orbit, to reconnect with the freighter that had brought them here, and he specifically. He had no specific destination in mind, really no place he could imagine to be on this planet. It was hardly the first alien world he had stepped foot onto as a surveyor, he had plenty of experience in that regard. And more than before he had the pack and equipment to prove his survival on him. All his possessions were that which could fit on his back, or in the back of a all terrain transport vehicle some several model years removed from the current and newest possible vehicle on the market; but it had come cheap and cheap was exactly what he needed as the drop ship lifted up over his head and slowly lifted up above the alien landscape to the space ship high above orbit.

In a wide empty plane between towering sandstone mesas, on dry gravel alien earth Ferran Ferraro looked up to watch the faint glimmer of the drop ship as it disappeared above Ember's slowly disappearing atmosphere. As the last link to the rest of humanity he expected to see for a long time he reflected back to why he was here.

_______________________

“There isn't any way to eat alien life-forms.” protested Henri, a tall – no, rather: towering – broad shouldered man with a broad boulder like face and deep gravely voice that warped around his peculiar French accent, “It just wouldn't be healthy let alone delictable. These are organisms that evolved far removed from the biospheres of Earth. Neither us nor them are biologically pre-disposed to consuming each other. Besides: think of the exotic and alien microcosms in their blood and muscle alone, there may very well be parasites and foreign diseases within their blood that could prove more than lethal to a human.”

“Yet, we eat rabbit, despite the possibility of contracting tularemia in the gutting and cleaning of wild rabbit.” Pike announced, waving a strange and patchwork device in his large scarred fists. A smaller man than Henri, he was also sinewy and springy with a wild movement about him. He smiled broad and laughed confidently to himself as Ferran sat by and observed the argument taking place.

“Simply put my friend, the unique microcosms that microbes – alien and terrestrial – inhabit are so biologically different from one another that it is often rare for even uncooked wild game to transfer fatal bacteria from wild host to the hunter. On Earth, the biological differences between man and animal is so great only the most aggressive bacteria or universal of viruses may make the jump. And much of the bacteria life that gives us shit, influenza for instance, is derived directly from animals that we have had long historic contact with spanning longer than three hours. Short periodic contact simply would not give a bacterium time to evolve and embed itself within a new host. So yes: man can consume alien life.”

“But this is within an environment like Earth, where we have evolved and developed our civilization and the ecocommunities between man and beast – wild and tamed – are so intrinsic and fundamental to the existence of society. As such, we better understand this than anything else. To suggest mankind can consume extraterrestrial flesh is not just a dangerous theory, but an apocalyptic hypothesis. Surely you must understand?”

Aboard the space cruiser Le Ile the small crew of some maybe five surveyors coasted through hyperspace en'route from an expedition investigating exoplanets considered suitable for not just human habitation, but available for mining; and most importantly free of any form of life that might be disturbed by a human presence. The outcomes of the mission though was however a significant bust as far as economic potential goes as the survey crew had stumbled upon a planet not only fit for humanity by absolutely teeming with life. And Pike, or Pike North had not just simply suggested that mankind could kill and eat alien flesh, but had done so himself. It was hardly the first time and was simply one of several incidents that continually sparked the same routine debate whenever it happened with the frenchman and commander Henri Duplais and Pike North bickering for hours on the implications of become an invasive hunter to another world. For commander Henri the consequences spanned not just the ecological implications of re-writing another world's biological web and the life-forms' behaviors but the possibility of introducing new contagions to mankind by ingesting them.

“The fundamental building block of life is carbon.” Henri argued, “There is the fundamental molecular platform from whence foreign infection can derive.”

“And the fundamental building block of life is carbon, which is why we can eat it!” North pronounced proudly, his mid western accent roaring out heavy, “But this does not narrow the gap so much that we can contract the new ebola from eating a few blue alien monkeys; no matter how tall”

“You can't be serious, if you insist you're going to someday get yourself killed from a serious infection and no one will be able to help.”

“You'll at least be able to study it when it does.” Pike apathetically dismissed.

Henri rolled his eyes, “That's not to say you're well into violation of UN law.”

“So shoot me!” Pike laughed, “You haven't turned me in yet so I don't imagine you ever will.” There was a brimming confidence in his voice, and it shone as bright as a star in his face. True: no one would likely ever report him for it, the crew had been together for too long and kept itself locked into such a small space that they had learned to tolerate and accept each others idiosyncrasies whether they liked it or not. Between this and battling hazardous wild-life and environments the bond between each of the crew was tight, almost tribal. To the point really that anywhere outside of Earth, Henri's rank as commander was irrelevant, on board Le Ile they were all commander.

“So...” Ferran began, he was the voice of Mediterranean romance and Spanish mysticism. The sort of poetic gospel of the tongue that would have been sung in a Spanish flamenco had it been written in Catalan. While this was true, he didn't look much the part; his hair was long and wirey and the fro twirled about at all matter of directions and with his scraggy wiry beard his tan face was plainly outlined with black hair. But he was also physically fit, as much as anyone else on board with a prominent runner's build. “Do you think they'll go through on the contract if we come back saying we found a planet unfit to mine?”

Henri looked down at him with a distraught muted expression. Their operation was starting to run into the red after a string of bad luck. More and more contractors were refusing to pay out in full for planets with a healthy biome and private surveyors such as themselves were beginning to be locked away more and more for editing their reports and leading adventurists to unsuitable planets. Not only shooting up profits but entangling more and more of the established mining companies in chaotic lawsuits with the UN as their own inspectors arrived after the fact.

Henri was a man who played by the book, always had. Even if he let people like Pike into the company he always delivered the report as he saw the planet. He made no edits. He never sterilized the planet on paper. And as such, he was losing out big. Either the worlds were too barren, too dangerous, or actually had life, a simple microbe the size of a human hair was enough to trigger concern in some department heads of the UN's Office of Extraterrestrial Life, the OEL. The situation on Earth wasn't getting much better either and Henry often confided that he believed some of the company executives may someday assassinate the “Good Commander” for bombing their stock values during one of the greatest energy crunches on Earth since the 21st century.

The topic brought a discomforting silence to the table and the three men sat in subdued silence. “Well, it's been a nice talk.” Pike said, slamming his hand against the table and standing up. Ferran looked after him as he headed to the airlock door, it automatically hissed open as he came within arm's reach of it.

As Pike headed down the corridor hall, Henry was next to leave in a meditative silence. Ferran couldn't blame him, he knew how bad it was. This wasn't a secret between the sparse crew anyways. And with him now alone, all he could do was meditate.

_______________________

Ferran Ferraro leaned over a shallow pool of water in the Ember wasteland's shaded against the alien sun by a pillar of sandstone rising high over head. Behind Ferran was the bulky transport he was driving. It was electrically charged, with a pair of solar cells hanging from the roof like a pair of wings to keep the batteries charged when there was sun, otherwise it was hydrogen ran; and that was provided Ferran could manage to produce pure hydrogen outside of a formal lab.

The Catalonian felt the edges of his face. He had shaven just before he fled Earth so his sharply angled features were plainly visible in the reflection of the shallow pool. His long curly hair was cut back, and was the same texture as black sheep's wool. His eyes shone sharp though, even in the dim light he could make out the soft blue of his iris' in the still and crystal clear puddle.

He turned his head this-way and that as he looked down at the water. Eventually he reached back to the pouch hanging at his side and produced Pike's strange little device. It was home-made, he remembered when Pike was making it, it was actually just after he had signed onto Henry's tiny outfit as a exogeologist, their old had died when his space-suit ruptured on a hostile world and he was quickly overwhelmed by vaporous sulfuric acid.

But he remembered being lectured by Pike and taught what he was doing on those long voyages. Then he was just planning his xenotarian diet experiments, he was more cautious than Henry gave him credit for. As he told Ferran the device – a handheld computer – was configured to scan and display the contents of any alien flora, fauna, or even water he would come across. He could tell what the molecular composition of a piece of meat was, if it contained any possible toxin or contaminant, anything really. By sifting through the data of even the most mundane reading he could come to the conclusion that, “It can be grilled!”

Ferran quickly realized it was merely a specialized scanner. One that worked at an altered frequency but didn't nearly have the penetrating power of industrial survey scanners. But it worked, and it worked wonders. Feeling curious – he was set on water for the time being – he dipped the scanner's long pointed probes into the water and turned it on. The flat holographic screen lit up immediately and soft subtle purring noises sang from the prongs. A progress bar on screen appeared then disappeared as soon as it had come online. It was finished in less than a second. But then: it was only water.

The result it gave Ferran was the typical readout for water. Two-parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. But being untapped and foreign it came with a twist. The small puddle had a sigh gypsum and salt content. In fact it was dangerously high for him to drink, it would take considerable filtering for him to even consider. He surmised it may have just been because it had been sitting there for so long, that rains had broken down and disturbed and suspended minute particles of sand and they remained suspended in the water, and that it in fact had concentrated; perhaps the puddle was a larger pool just months before but had evaporated away to the dry hot air.

He at least decided to put his hypothesis to the test and restarted and thrust the modified scanner into the sand at his heels. He let the device work its magic and it rang a soft note before it turned up what he about suspected: high levels of silicate, high levels of gypsum. He registered the result in his head, and stood up and strolled towards his vehicle.

It was larger enough that it might have perhaps given six people a comfortable ride across rough terrain. It's large thick tires held the frame aloft on rugged, but smooth suspension that kept the entire vehicle from rocking so much as a centimeter in rough terrain. But now all of the back seats housed some mass of equipment or personal effect. He had a rifle, ammunition, a small battery pack, computer equipment, two insulated tents and accompanying sleeping bags with pillows. He had extra clothes and enough medical supplies for the better part of six months if he consistently got hurt. He had preserved and dried rations both canned and air sealed in small baggies. There was table salt, pepper, drinking water for days, and of course: a personal computer tablet with enough reading material for a small library and room yet to spare. There was also the Spanish guitar that leaned against the passenger side seat; he only just barely knew how to play, just competent enough to pluck through some familiar songs.

Having satisfied himself with the pit stop he got back into the off-roader and drove slowly off through the winding canyons of an unexplored ancient seabed.

_______________________

Le Ile came within Earth, and a wash of joy came across Ferran as he lay eyes again on home. Even with the complexities implied in a return from an unprofitable voyage there was a primal desire to see home that numbed all other concern as they came in.

Apart from he, Henry, and Pike there was Murasaki, a small shouldered half Japanese girl and Heinrick, a quiet reserved German. All five of Le Ile's crew were present in the cabin as they coasted in close to Earth. The serenity of seeing home again after any amount of time was like a drug in of itself. There was an anxiety no different than driving up the long driveway after a long trip away as Le Ile made its approach to Orbital Docking Station number 2, New York-Houston-Toronto station. Coming within three miles of the dock Le Ile's autopilot took control and immediately began a flurry of activity in connecting with the docking station's own navigation computer and made a carefully charted course to rendezvous with an open terminal.

For all intents and purposes, the process went perfectly. Le Ile gently dove into the great inner docking shaft and passed over, under and by shimmering multitudes of space craft destined for within and outside of the Sol system. Empty docking shafts stretched out from the distant walls in a series of widely spaced stations and levels. The entire station spun, creating gravity and as Le Ile made it close to the destined terminal its movements began to match that of the station's orbit. In close to an hour they were docked, locked, and the bridge connected.

It was only the first step to home, but it felt as though they were already there as they stepped out into the great hive of Orbital Docking Station 2. All around in the lobby of the third-level inbound terminal station was a buzz. Announcements went out over the station intercoms in several languages to announce the arrivals or pending departures of craft, the schedule of transport to and from Earth. And the news.

The news.

The moment Le Ile's crew heard the differences in the news – its tone, its content, who it was proclaimed by – they heard something was different. And when they stepped onto the mezzanine for the great central lobby and saw the great, new, terrible flags hanging from the outer station wall they realized something was very, very wrong.

Their hearts collectively raced in each of their chests, and they broke from a casual stroll to their destination to a heart racing flight through the sequences of layered stations. Along the way they stopped to gape at the proclamations and propaganda for the Federation of Worlds. To read the electronic broadsides and fliers at every door briefly listing their intentions. Economic growth, social stability, political order, a strong will in government.

To the already terrified Henri, the message didn't need to be any clearer. Those people he was afraid of were in government and he was about to issue a bad report. But a bad report during a time of his own financial weakness. But that also, those worlds he sought to protect would be in danger. They had all read this story before.

“Wait!” Murasaki cried out, “We need to figure out what to do.”

Ferran thought for a second, and quickly agreed with her, “Yes, we have to do something. Can we get a private booth?”

Henri looked at them with a long heavy expression on his face. He came around quickly to them. “Y-yes. Ok.” he agreed, “First place we see, come on.”

“Fuck, I need a drink.” Pike moaned.

Matias had been quick to start his work. Before the base camp had been properly assembled, the Martian had already hastily put together his own temporary work area comprised of little more than a table, lots of documents strewn about the surface, and some lights beneath a tarp. Behind him, the dropship crews were busy building Matias' new home and the foundation of his unprecedented mining venture. He could hear the hollering of workers behind him, and the clamor that came with constructing a camp across an acre of land. And yet, he stayed focused on the task at hand.

"Now, you see this?" he heard someone say. "This hea', this goddayum shit." it continued. It was the unmistakable voice of Argus, his robot companion. The robot had a complex artificial intelligence. For the better part of six months, it had developed without the restrictions that had been previously enforced by the UN. He spoke with a southern drawl Matias had only ever heard in antique western films about the cowboys of old, but with the characteristic flanging effect that had been deliberately given to all droids of the same model. "Ya'll are the reason I exist."

The exchange was interesting enough to pull Matias away from the work he was doing. When he looked towards the source of the voice, he saw Argus prancing about with a rifle cradled in its arms. The workers around the droid were visibly irritated, going about their jobs. "If ya'll were gentlebots like myself, ya'll would be done by now." it said. "I swear to god almighty, we gon' get eaten by a thirty-foot alien toad before ya'll finish, and as I'm devoured and promptly spat out, I will take solace in knowing that, at least in your final moments, ya'll hauled ass, unlike what ya'll are doin' now."

"Argus, settle dow-"

The robot did not stop. It spared a glance toward Matias before continuing, "You know what, you're right." Argus nodded. "Thank you, Matias." the droid said sincerely, looking back toward the workers. "I thank you, gentlemen. I thank you for your efforts. Ya'll are great. If not for ya'll, I wouldn't be standin' here. It is your inefficiency that made it necessary for me, and my brothas, to exist." The robot raised an arm and looked at an invisible wristwatch, "'Cause ya'll are goddayum slow."

By then, Matias had closed the distance between he and Argus. "Calm down, cowboy." he said, knocking Argus' slouch hat off his metal head. "You're making a scene."

"Rude." The droid picked his hat off the ground and dusted the red dirt off. There was a brief moment of silence after the robot was ordered to be quiet. Only the distant humming of engines and pressurized air pumps could be heard.

"When I said "supervise", I meant keep watch, not berate the workers." Matias told him.

"I'm just messin'." Argus assured him. "You know," the droid chuckled, "back on Mars, if I had reminded any human of their inferiority, they'd have put me down, thinkin' I was tryina instigate a rebellion or somethin'. You know, All Humans Must Die and all that. But here? Ain't no one to put me down here. I can say whatever the hell I please. This is real freedom, watch." the robot said, scanning the area for someone to verbally victimize. It found a man, one of the workers, sitting on a crate. An overweight man, sweating and looking exhausted. "Hey!" Argus called out, "You're the fattest man on the planet, congratulations!"

Matias held back a chuckle. The man wasn't even that fat, just chubby. He turned to his robot companion with a look of disapproval, "That's a low hanging fruit." he said.

"A low hanging fruit is what that guy is hoping to find." countered Argus. Again, Matias held back a laugh, giving Argus a light shove.

"You're a real son of a bitch, aren't you metal-man?" the chubby man shouted back from across the camp.

"What did you say about my mother?" Argus responded. The droid loved confrontation, but it was never serious. He did it for the fun of it, as far as Matias could tell.

Argus took as step forward as if to go fight the man, but Matias pulled the bot back by the shoulder. "Come on, Argus, we've got some planning to do." he said. The two walked back towards Matias' temporary "office", where a map of Ember in full color had been rolled out over a table. There were markings all over the map designating points of interest. Potential dig sites, promising locations for future encampments, areas of danger, and even the landing spots of his competitors. All of it had been information he had gathered before and during the journey to Ember, some of it through straight-forward research, and some through bribery of the freighter staff.

"What do you have here, boss?" Argus asked.

"Remember that information I told you about? Well, the guy delivered." Matias explained. Reaching for one of the folders, he pulled out a series of papers and showed them to Argus. "I've got it digitalized too." he said. "Do me a favor and scan all that. Store it for later, in case we lose it."

"Roger." the robot mumbled as he read through the documents. Bots like him were obviously better at storing information. The human brain forgets and mixes things up, but an AI remembers all. "Damn, boss." he started again, "This is a lot of info."

"I paid a pretty low price for it, too." Matias said proudly, "But I expect it'll cost me more next time. If these mining operations take off, these shipments are going to get bigger and bigger. The stakes are gonna be higher, and so will the prices. For now, though, this is good."

"Sure is." Argus agreed. "This fucker here has a hovercraft." the bot pointed at one of the names on the list. "Shit, what else is here besides shipments?"

"Everything I could gather." Matias assured. "We know everything our competitors brought with them on the freighter, and we know where they were dropped off. I can do some extra work based on all that information to find out what kind of budget they're working with too." he continued. "And, back on Mars, before I left I made sure to pull the profiles on some of these people. We know some of them are military," he paused and pointed at another name, "This guy here, the guy from Ceres, he's the head of that operation. Long academic history." Matias' finger moved to the bottom of the page, "These guys here have a different kind of history - the criminal kind."

"So they're dangerous." Argus concluded.

"They're all dangerous." said Matias. "As far as I'm concerned, every one of them is a potential danger. There are no rules here, no laws. We're on the frontier now. The wild west. And I'll be frank, cowboy, there's a good chance this whole thing comes crumbling down for us. Between whatever dangers this planet holds, and our neighbors, the probability of failure is-"

"58.42 percent." Argus cut in.

"Right." Matias nodded. "So, this mining thing may not work out. Maybe we don't make a profit. Maybe the wildlife decides to ruin shit for us, or a storm. Point is, I'm not hedging all my bets on this shit. We need something to fall back on." he explained. "And look, I don't know shit about mining, but there is one thing I'm good at."

"Information."

"Exactly." Matias smiled. "Back on Mars, I had a pretty good gig. Information, espionage. It's dangerous work, but you know what they say, knowledge is power. Even if our little mining operation fizzles out and dies, we need to make sure we're on top. These other operations, they might make it. Maybe we're muscled out of the business. But if we hold the information.. if we hold the power, all these other guys will come to us. They'll want to know what their competitors are packing, what they're doing, where they are. They'll come to us for information and we'll name a price. One way or another, we're gonna make this shit work. There is no alternative."

"You got it, boss." Argus nodded. "All you gotta do is point me in the right direction. Whatever you need."

Matias shrugged, smiling. "Well," he looked around, seeing the workers were about to finish, "Not much to do right now. We're starting from the very bottom. 'Course, we're gonna have to mine some of this shit soon, and I'm gonna need you for that. But in the meantime, when we're not out looking for this money-metal, I'm going to need you on the radio."

"I did always want to be a singer." Argus joked.

Matias chuckled, "Nah.." he shook his head, "I need you trying to establish contact with some of our neighbors." he explained. "And look, that shit you were doing with the workers? Don't do that on the radio. I don't need you pissing off our competition. I need you to be nice. Use that charming accent of yours. Be friendly. Ask them things. Where they are, what kind of equipment they're working with, shit like that. Pry. But don't make it obvious. Take whatever information you gather and write it down. And be helpful. Offer help, warn them about potential dangers, whatever. Make them trust you."

"Oh.. and don't fuckin' sing."

"Did they tell you how big the bunker is?" Chris inquired to the intercom in his hand, idly staring out the window of his porthole. In the blackness of space, he could see his balding, overweight reflection, though his gaze was transfixed on the looming atmosphere of Ember. He looked away for a moment, grabbing the highball glass from the cup-holder of his chair. He figured Hartford wanted him to feel special by putting him in a Dionysiad-Class dropship -- a ship used as a status symbol rather like one of Earth's early "Rolls Royce" automobiles -- a very Hartford final farewell before embarking on such a mission, though the separation between himself and the pilot immediately made him feel more lonely than luxurious. He was about to spend years of his life on an empty, alien planet, and somehow, in the back of his mind, he had assumed somewhere down the line Hartford would give him a partner, a fellow prospector, a lonely spinster to help him populate the planet, something. Someone.
He began to pity himself for the loneliness he lived in, and was now imprisoned in, before quickly being interrupted by the pilot's southern drawl.

"Big enough for two, if you count the robot as a two." The pilot chuckled through a speaker alongside the dropship's starboard wall, nestled between the coffee maker and the mini fridge. Chris rolled his eyes, having all but forgotten about the android in the dropship's storage compartment. Hartford had only told him the model, which he had eagerly researched before his final flight to Ember. It was not a robot buddy, by any means, but a glorified home security system with the conversational capability of a two year old. Hartford did not mean to send him with a partner, perhaps because that meant to doubly invest in their mission with GeluCo, though it was not beyond their kindness to give him something more to keep the giant molerats at bay than a pistol.

"I actually knew one of the guys who helped build the bunker waaay back when, before the war." The speaker mentioned once more, the pilot perhaps having sensed the loneliness in Chris's voice. "He said it was a pretty secure place to hunker down, with enough dried food in the pantry to last a lifetime. Said he left a few Jugs mags in the rafters too, that son of a gun." The pilot chuckled once more, with a timbre that seemed warmly amused even through the metallic whine of the intercom. It did little to console Chris, who had staved off the realization of his impending loneliness until the last minute, when the dropship was literally making its way to the sunny savanna bunker he had been promised.

"Thanks for the heads-up." Chris responded, bringing the intercom to his mouth. "I'm gonna get some shut-eye."

"Good idea, catch some Z's. Interplanetary jetlag's no joke, and the upcoming turbulence might make you puke. Lotsa people puke through the storms if you wake up, though. No shame in that. First aid kit's in the can if'n you need some Tums."

Chris gave the intercom a nod, as if it could sense his appreciation. He stood from the decidedly "Wall-Street Looking" leather chair provided within the Dyionisian and took a few steps to the bed -- An equally over-the-top water bed. He slumped into the bed, careening with the motion of the mattress, trying to block the existential loneliness he was about to face from his mind. Surprisingly, after a few minutes of shielding his eyes from the light on the undulating mattress, he was successful, and drifted off to sleep within the hour, before any of the tumultuous storms his pilot had mentioned.

---

---

It was a far cry from the wake-up call he had expected. He had only woken when gravity lifted him off of the mattress and slammed him into the back of his cabin's wall with a deafening, grinding, scream of a sound unlike anything Chris Murphy had ever heard. The blaring red lights at the small monitor at the front of his cabin were all he could focus on -- everything else, from the coffee machine to the mini fridge, to the torn water bed's spraying mattress, flew around the cabin like a snow globe. The ship lurched forward, flipping Chris flatly onto his face with a concussive force not unlike the spine-breaking half of a mousetrap. Chris's last waking memory, after the flashing red letters, was his blood on the carpeted floor of the Dionysian.

When he awoke, he was no longer bleeding, though his chin and his shirt were covered in a crusted layer of blood. His head hadn't ached like this since his days as a high school runningback. For a moment, his concussion-induced haze caused him to question if he was still a runningback. Had he dropped the ball before making a touchdown? More than anything, Chris needed to know if he had made it to the end zone, and so he rolled to his side, looking idly around for the football. His hand pressed itself into the carpet, which glittered in the blinking red emergency lights with broken glass, which Chris did not seem to notice. His other hand blindly pawed through the grass for the ball. Why was this grass so thick? Who threw all this garbage on the field? Chris fell to his opposite side, rolling onto his back and reaching a glass-splintered hand toward the sparking, crackling, fluorescent sun, for one of his teammates to lift him up. Something was wrong.

Chris wasn't playing football. Chris was on a spaceship, and something had gone wrong. Something about a robot, or throwing up, or...

Whatever it was, Chris did not have time to remember before passing out once more.

(Selenite Enterprises & Carver)

Howie Carver was hardly asleep when the growing light and accompanying roar of another drop ship pierced the sky. The ground trembled under the force of the thrusters. This ship was far larger than the one Carver had arrived on. Quickly gathering his things Carver wiped the sleep from his eyes and readied himself to meet the crew.

---

---

After a quick introduction and brief rest Elizabeth Flood wasted no time coordinating and getting everyone straight to work. She divides the duties and allocates everyone a task, even Carver.

Carver ran stock of their defensive equipment and guns, checking over everything and ensuring the crew knew how to use it. After that, one of the first priorities on Miss Floods agenda was loading the magnetic resonator onto the hovercraft. Once done, wasting no further time Carver escorted Miss Flood and one other of her comrades out in search for baltuskite. The two remaining crew members stayed at the base with the task of finishing the unload and setting everything up in preparation.

If it were a man's first time on a new world, he would have sword to have seen the most magnificent sight in all the universe. But Ferraro was not a man new to new worlds, he had traversed Martian-like landscapes only barely conducive to the most basic life, strolled in environment suits across tracts of atmosphere-less deserts where even during the day the stars shown in the clear pitch-black of an alien day-night. He had stood in landscapes thick with sulfur and carbon monoxide, the air and landscape tinged with thick sickly yellow smog that blanketed the world from view as he collected low-level atmospheric readings. He had ventured out onto worlds so lushly covered with unchecked foliage that he barely made it twenty-steps from the landing until he had to stop and give up lest he was entangled in vines strong as steel and seemingly alive and aware of the potential threat that was him. He had almost died, he had been lifted skywards on worlds of low gravity and upon the gust of a suddenly bursting geyser of gas and sediment. In one case, he had completed an entire orbit of an asteroid-sized moon; hell as a prank he was tossed into orbit around Phobos as a hazing into Henri's crew.

But to say that at the least, sitting parked atop one of the last sandstone spires at the edge of two vast biomes was not a breathtaking experience would have been an understatement; though to claim it was the best available view was infantile in the lack of understanding the great vastness of space itself. Sitting perched on the roof of his heavy and burdened jeep and looking down across a great red savanna with immense moving herds of alien wild-life and its large coral masses looming above all as the sun began to set in the distant horizon was an experience ranking high in the adventurer's mind. Behind him, the mass of sandstone hoodoos and twisting gulleys between lonely islands of stone and sand leading into a great flat mesa that stretched infinitely beyond, the yellow and amber of the trackless upland desert glowing a fierce glow in the setting sun as the prairies opposite glowed with intense fire that rolled over great gentle hills.

He sat with a paper tablet on one knee, idly scratching out a sketch of the scene with pencils of only three colors: red, brown, and light blue. In the other he balanced his computer tablet, flipping idly through Pike's old saved data; much of it images and biological records of the alien life he had seen and eaten. Comparing the images of alien and brightly colored avians of a distant jungle world and the muted lizard-like ones that sat perched just a foot away eyeing Ferrarro with deep, dark eyes set behind long downward curving peaks he remembered that once Pike had said he, “Was like the Darwin of space.”

It was followed by a parable that like himself, Darwin in his time not only recorded the new life he encountered on his voyages aboard The Beagle, but also ate many of the specimens he came across. There was no doubt with how curious unafraid these creatures were of the otherwise and so far unthreatening Ferraro. But he could tell that their lack of fear was more an abundance of anxious curiosity and wonder, they didn't fly away because they didn't know if they should; and Ferraro didn't want to test their limits.

After a while of this, Ferraro brushed aside the old Pike data and turned to the tablet's radio tuner. There were others on this planet, and perhaps he surmised that cross-job communications would begin and that he might listen into the conversations. He might perhaps approach either of them for free lance surveyor work, he came with his own equipment. He had thought about it on the journey, but then the fear of being outed and returned back to Earth as an escaped person of interest had forced him to keep himself isolated out of fear; he had only spoken to and interacted with those that were absolutely necessary. But he was on this new-world now, no one could send him back to Earth.

On the airbands he only got garbled static, and some barely intelligible signals. He took it that the garbled data that came through certainly suggested that perhaps he was near to someone, or it would be communications between the main freighter and the ongoing operations; he figured dropships would continue coming down for some time as the start ups continued to trickle down from above. But he also remembered the planet's ionosphere was weak, or negligibly existent. Should that be the case, was it just another frequency of inference or some of it blown out the rain through interaction with the ions. He had no way to test of confirm wither way, even with digital enhancement of signals so he checked it off as a hypothesis.

Still, he figured he would check the alternative and jumping down from the hood – to the great startling of the local avian-life which screeched and squalled in surprise at Ferraro's sudden movement – he fished through the incalculable odds and ends he had lifted along with him and came out with a single naked chord with an adapted to his tablet. He plugged it in, and let the other end lay haphazardly on the ground and scanned the bandwidth.

Nothing.

But that he guessed was par the course. Things were as they were just beginning and not only would no one be drilling yet but they would have established no ground-wave communication. He could have kicked himself for thinking so, but thought that it was at least good to check, even if a quick scan. So he wound the cable in his hands, unplugged it, and tossed it aside.
___________________________

“So what the hell is going on?” Mursaki nearly shouted, her frail high-pitched voice echoing gratingly in the otherwise private booth in one of the several on-station diners and restaurants mid-station. Ferran flew nervously through headlines on his tablet computer searching frenetically to any story that looked to begin the narrative over the period they were gone. He could feel a cold sweat pooling under his brow.

Among the crew, each of them had at their side – on in white knuckled hands – a glass of beer. A pitcher had been set in the middle of the table as they nervously chattered among themselves in terrified whispers. What had happened? Who was the Federation? To Ferran, headlines and article clippings sped by as fast as he could swipe.

“Federation Office of Economy reveals plans to deregulate!”

“Federation Department of Security and Asset Management to crack down on Antistate Terrorism!”

There was a creeping coldness in the air and an isolation all about. Despite the station now acting and appearing far busier, all of it felt alien to the surveyors. The station now was home to more than the space freighter crews, families on vacation or otherwise headed out to see the colonized worlds, or to work. There were a lot more suits. A lot more tightly-cut hairdos. More clean and pampered faces. Fake smiles, and shark eyes among the seas. To them, it didn't feel like Earth anymore, it didn't feel like the world they knew.

“Have you gotten anything?” Heinrick asked meekly, his voice broken by a strong Bavarian accent.

“I- I think.” Ferran concluded, coming to an old article. But as he read it, something felt off. Odd about the wording.

“Inter governmental changeover in effect as of last Tuesday results in the purging of nearly twenty-thousand ineffectual individuals. Following last Wednesday's protest by energy ministers over shortages in power supply, General Martin Ardolla has stepped in with sanction from Justice Department to purge and seize the assets of a long list of ineffectual members. The UN delegation meeting scheduled for later this month has been put on indefinite hold as ordered by the warrant.” Ferraro read.

“”This is a great leap forward.” Adam Sangler of InterStar Energy solutions said, “We can finally move ahead.” Ferraro continued, his tone began to stress and strain as he went, “There is wide praise from the private sector, which is anticipating the end to ineffectual government.

“Following minor outcry from critics, Ardolla has announced he will permit a snap election in the next couple of months to replace the relieved deputies. Ardolla has also announced the formation of the Federation Party, and is sure he and like-minded individuals seeking progress and reform will follow suit. When asked for a electoral position for the Federation Party Ardolla's office responded, “The Federation Party stands for security, a solid economy, and stability moving ahead into the future; to abandon to instability and uncertainty of the present times.””

“What the fucking hell does that mean?” Pike asked, agape. He took a heavy swig of his beer, and slammed a glass now half-empty onto the table, “Instability and uncertainty? I'd say we were very stable, and fair! What's this huff about security?”

Ferror shrugged. He too couldn't quite baffle what the news report had said. By all means, he believed they had all of what was being promised already. Besides the fuel crisis, he was sure that shortly that would be resolved. But he was scratching his head at that. “What happened then during those snap elections?” Henri asked, “Federation Party won didn't they?”

It didn't take Ferraro very long to confirm it. He scrolled a few months in advance and read the article out to them. Evidently the Federation Party won with a 90% super majority. The last ten percent had been arrested on charges of treason following rapidly made connections to the attempted sabotage or destruction of the UNS Acadia battle freighter in the area of Pluto's orbit.

“But, why though? Surely there had to be someone contesting it.” Pike said.

“That's the thing,” Ferraro replied, shaking his head, “I'm trying to find anything on rival political organizations and I can't find it. It basically just skips straight to election day.”

“There couldn't have been a blackout, could there?” Mursaki asked.

“Try the dark net, can you get on it?” Heinrick suggested.

“That's what I've been trying on the side,” Ferraro told him, “But somehow that's even blocked, or shut down.”

“Fucking hell.” Pike grumbled
___________________________

A steady wind began to blow dry across Ember as the sun began to set, basking the world in an even deeper and fiercer reddish-orange that turned to purple than the deep hazy blue of night. Having surrendered the highlands to avoid being swept up by any unknown weather patterns Ferarro turned back into the valleys and gullets and found a small half-cave at the base of one of the many millions of hoodoos.

To sleep rugged on an alien world was a new thought and experience to him as he set up his camp, placing a few small things about; a gas stove, a cushion, and a pot to prepare the night's rations in. Prior, he had always had the safety of a space ship to return to and sleep. And he had never laid down to sleep in a wilderness full of its own alien life. What insects were there that scuttled from the rocks during the cold of night? Were there any predators that would try to hunt him, to stalk him? He had a rifle on him, but he began to doubt if he could wake in time to use it.

As he bent over the gas stove and lighting the ignition he started to think about the people, the men or women who set off across unknown landscapes and had to sleep out in the old wilderness, not knowing what was out there. Man itself was very much like that all over, at the mercy of nature. But man had each other, and even those old adventurers were not always alone themselves. For Ferraro, he was very much alone.

He broke the package of dried rations and dropped it into his small pot. An unidentifiable mass of noddles or something and some other stuff fell with a hard pang in the bottom. Uncorking a water bottle he filled the pot a quarter of the way and set it on the fire to boil.

He thought on the matter, being on an alien planet in his position brought him to the threshold of strange and new opportunities. How many people could claim to have been a successful xenobiologist? When life was found, it was always effectively abandoned to let it live as it lived, or continued to live after the brief human visitation. But Ferraro wasn't a biologist, he was a geologist; Pike doubled as one informally and Ferraro missed him for that, he would be ecstatic to be so unhinged on this strange new world.

But this created an option contrary to the goals of this entire ordeal he made himself a part of. People had come to Ember to mine it, to strip it of its mineral wealth. Not to study its animals and plants. And somehow he suspected that if he were to do so this may be interpreted as a means to get them all to stop and put him in the cross hairs of not just the Federation, but the start ups here on Ember.

He was equipped for it, so he could pick up surveying. Try to make and define his claims. There was more than enough land. And having pre-surveyed turf he could sell it off to the companies here. He may be able to start again. He may be able to bust his companions free; if they were still alive that is. Hell, he may even be able to finance his way off the planet and go out on the lamb across the whole of space if he ever needed to.

He had options.

The water in the pot began to boil.
______________________________________

They had worked things out, and having done so returned to Earth proper aboard the shuttles. The ride was painless, if tense knowing the world they were returning to had changed. Having learned all of the sudden of the effective coup, Earth felt as alien to the men in the shuttle as any alien planet they had explored. As the clouds slowly peeled back around the gentle descent of the passenger ferry it began to feel they were coming in on an advanced civilized nation that had taken them prisoner, something straight out of a cautionary novel. But when all things stopped and they entered out onto the ferry terminal platform they melted away as ritually as they had before, exchanging terse fair wells with the implication that they would meet again. To any normal office worker in the Earth workforce their departure from one another was as if they had simply left the office and were on their ways home.

And easily, that's exactly what they were doing. Though they had had come down in New York – over the island of Manhattan – any point of planet was so accessible that heading home from here was simply inconvenience at worst. It came down to hailing an automated cab, issuing them the credits needed to go anywhere, and be off. As the crew of Le Ile separated to the far corners of the globe, Ferran was headed deeper into New York, Henri himself had moved to live in the futuristic metropolis.

The ride was slower and smoother in the cab than would be for intercontinental travel. But Ferran starred out the window all the same as the automated aircraft skillfully hovered through the intertwining lanes of criss-crossing traffic in the upper echelons of New York. It's engine a dulled humming sound barely audible behind the radio music he turned on as he leaned back.

Upper New York was an intermingling series of towering skyscrapers interlocked with pedestrian walkways between the towering high-rises. Each building built with its own unique curves and rounded architecture, reminiscent of the Bauhaus style. At each level too were hanging gardens that fell across the sides like the long hair of a woman, dressing the numerous structures with a sheet of green or many other colors. The gardens were a side-effect of a trend towards urban gardens, and maximizing the efficiency and offsetting the costs of industrial cities begun in the early 21st century; many of them were vegetable and fruit gardens that mainly serviced the residents of the upper levels.

But it was not between these areas of middle class and upper class residences and functions that Ferran was destined for. The color and the brightness of the polished urbanscape above slowly gave way to a dark gloominess cast by the not-so-late afternoon sun at the point where relatively new construction gave way to the ancient brownstones below and steel girders that supported the New York Sky City.

Here was a world that became increasingly illuminated with artificial lighting, LED street lamps, and LED screens on a rotation of the daily news with the sound turned off or the latest garish ads. A certain disconnect began to show between the bright illumination of a promising future the over world claimed to deliver, and the reality that so many now lived. Between the darkened crannies of fire-escapes turned porches and the rude causeways thrown up for pedestrian use in the great under city stood in reclined casual posture the many millions who lived to literally support New York above.

There was a Blade Runner ambiance below as the automated cab came down to its minimal cruising height and quietly hummed along to the address Ferran was seeking. It was far enough down that in the world looked almost bathed in a perpetual twilight. Great blurry patches of illumination brightened an otherwise bleak underworld from the advertisement and news screens. But there was something else daunting down here, the presence of armed soldiers in their heavy encasement of body armor, their fire-arms held close to their chests as if the heavy polygonal weapons was a child to be protected. The cab was stopped briefly by a patrolman who rose to meet it on a bike, and made a check with the cab's ID system and passenger data before letting it through.

Ferran had been in these reaches before, and never once seen it so heavily guarded as he did now. Automated gun turrets hovered over the heads of street patrols and flew passed the windows of the cabs. When as soon as it landed at the desired address, the daunting feeling of being watched and the suppression of knowing an armed jackbooted thug was so near sent him scurrying into the glass-plated lobby of the old high-rise he was bound for.

The lobby of the apartment cast a sharp contrast between it and the gloomy twilight that hung perpetually outside. With the benefit of bright warm lights the whole great marbled room was aglow with light as warm and inviting as the day-time sun in early evening. Against the moody blue of outside, there seemed to be little reason to ever step out again, and that one should just simply stay inside.

He was hardly the only one to feel at their best inside the lobby. Free of the soldiers, the residents of the building conducted themselves with the day-to-day regularity as they would have otherwise. In a corner a large group of youths stood around a table where tablet computers projected holographic monsters that did battle over one another. Nearby, a couple in recliners laid back and read actual books under a large faded photograph of the building they called home hanging overhead.

“TRUMP” the letters above the familiar glass facade read in gaudy gold plating.

Whatever grandeur and historical value the large room-sized picture though tried to make, or sought to remind its residents of was completely lost in the reality. The floor was cracked, barely polished at all, and the furniture was at least as old as Ferran's grandparents. There was a musty smell of old coffee and cigarette smoke looming in the air with the general build up of body odor brought on by so many people living together in one, or the cleaner used to try and cover it up along with the smell of being in the level of a building centuries old. As one walked too, one saw the patched holes of where there had once been stationary and once permanent furniture – the front desk, for instance.

And the great photo was perhaps the only nostalgic piece on the walls. Covering the walls to an even greater extent was the iconography of the true owners of the apartment. The local co-op. Great red and black and orange and black banners with a rearing cat graced the walls, as well as artwork in the same color scheme. Lower along the wall, a much more enigmatic and piece meal collection of artwork was hung on display, the pieces of the local inhabitants themselves; some had been painted straight onto the walls and floors themselves.

It had evolved in the neglect of use, and shifts of ownership into an anarchist's commune.

Ferran knew fairly well where to go. Coming up to the elevators, he sighed in relief in realizing they were not – for now – out of order. He called one down and stepped inside as it arrived. The carriage rocked as it began moving, and set itself upwards. With a rattle, it stopped and let him out into one of the upper floors.

The halls were fairly spacious and comfortable. With carpet stiff and ancient underfoot he gave an air of being old and classical, while not exactly pulling it off with the level of willing neglect given to it. It showed clear signs as well that it had had a different layout once upon a time, and that the apartment structure was not entirely the original intent, that it had begun as something else and changed, or changed several times in the course of its history.

Walking down the hall, he came up on a door at the far end. The door was cracked open a little, and he could have walked right in. But he opted to knock on the door frame to announce his presence.

“Come on in, door's open.” someone shouted from inside with a subdued Italian accent.

“Stefan, it's me: Ferran.”

There was the sound of shuffling as Ferran stepped into the apartment. Despite a few stray pieces of paper it was rather well kept, if lightly furnished. Along one wall sat a broken television and in front of it an outdated patterned couch covered in numerous cigarette burns. Along another wall was a fiberglass bookshelf laden down with a large collection of old tattered books, a tablet computer sat on top.

“Oh shit,” Stefan murmured from a back room, stumbling out at the head of a cloud of garlic and egg smelling air, “You're back!” he exclaimed, “You're back...” he repeated, sullenly.

“Yeah, and a great big mess I came back into.” Ferran grumbled.

“They're all fucking idiots.” Stefan hissed in Italian, “You want anything to eat?”

“No, I'm fine.”

“OK, give me a second to finish my lunch then.” he turned back into the back room, his kitchen and went about fixing his plate, “I feel a little guilty for not having anything for you.” he shouted from the back, “Are you sure?”

“No Stefan, I'll be fine.” Ferran shouted back, walking over to the couch and up at the television.

It was one of the newer models, almost paper thin and entirely black. It was mounted from the wall by about three inches and had no chords or cables running to it. In the center of the screen was a wide jagged hole. “What happened to your TV?” Ferran asked.

“Got mad.” Stefan responded, stepping out from his kitchen with a heavy dish of noodles and chicken. It was absolutely redolent with the heavy smell of garlic and butter. Ferran felt a movement of relief pass through his stomach at the thought that he avoided the garlic love affair that was Stefan's cooking.

“Was watching the whole 'election' process happen.” he continued after swallowing down a large fork full of creamy noodles, “When it really started to kick off and results poured in I saw the whole masterpiece the Federation had put together come into play and reveal itself. A couple calls later and I was so fucking pissed I tossed that rock I got from Mexico through it.”

“The one from the cave, with all the selenite formations?” Ferran asked.

Stefan nodded, “Broke some of the larger ones but I didn't care then to be honest.” he nodded his head towards a shelf on another wall where a large lumpy rock with white crystalline growths protruding from it, some of the larger and heavier ones had been clearly broken. “Put a big fucking hole in the wall too, fixed that up though.”

“But sit, come on.” Stefan nearly shouted, urging Ferran to follow suit to the couch as he sat.

“The whole coup is what I wanted to ask you about. You know people, what happened?”

Stefan took a long sigh, “The general used some security rules to effectively ban many of the leading figures from the larger UN parties.” he said, “A guy I know who works in the UN Security building reported seeing some strange new faces with some very corporate cards milling about. So there was some big money deals going on directly in the central offices. And this was a day of the security take-over.

“Every department but the Department of Economic Affairs was effectively liquidated.” Stefan went on, “Some information was actually leaked out from the desks of some of the larger energy companies to suggest this was a planned coup, they must have formed themselves a nice cartel to rope in Martin Ardolla, but he's always been a money hound, he'll go where the credits are strong.”

He took a moment to wolf down some of his plate, and chewed. “The funny thing is,” he continued, “before all this was happening there were brownouts all the time; remember? About mid-afternoon, or whenever China wakes up the entire grid would shut down as they redistributed energy towards essential functions to keep from blowing up the reactors from too much energy draw. But ever sense the coup there hasn't been a single brown out.”

“So, they wanted this to happen?” Ferran wondered outloud.

“Well of course. But the real question is was this whole crisis artificially crafted to exasperate the conditions on Earth to build up support for a movement to more aggressively mine for rare reactive ores?”

“That sounds like it would be the case then.” said Ferran as he leaned against the arm of the couch, “I guess I wasn't around for the worst of it. I was gone for... how long? I can't keep track in space very well.”

“A little over a year and a half, I wouldn't be surprised if it was almost two-years.”

“Yeah, and just before was when the big surveyor rush was ordered by the United Nations. Practically saved Henri, they pay for most of the material costs is subsidies. But the companies still got the bulk. He was having a hard time paying full wages and some of the accessory work.”

“UN doesn't pay for repairs?”

Ferran shook his head, “Fuel, mostly.”

“But what you're implying then is that the big companies had enough fuel stockpiled?” Ferran continued.

“Given that we haven't lost power in the couple months since it happened, I would say so.” he said with a nod, “Of course, it's damn hard to tell. But no one's complaining now that stocks are up. The new overlords just opened up nearly three-dozen once locked-down planets. Including Ember. Heard of Ember?”

“I would need to have been on a long voyage to have not.” Ferran said with a grumble, “That's a planet with life though, can they really?” in the bottom of his heart, Ferran knew they could now.

Stefan nodded, there wasn't any pleasure in it, “They can, they will, and they have.”

“A shame.”

“This is what happens when the people lack oversight in what actually runs their world. I've said it many time: but they got too big for their breaches.”

A moment of silence as Stefan dug around on his plate some more. “Say, you have trouble with the guards outside?” he asked.

“Nope, entire apartment came together to kick the fuckers out. You can use the back door when you leave, they won't see you that way.”

“Thanks.”

Daniel sat upon a boulder as he surveyed the building crews assemble his base camp on Ember. The cracking buzz of welding torches rang out through the encampment as the workers assembled the aluminum skeletons of barns and warehouses. Elsewhere, a team of laborers hoisted up a tall metal pylon that Daniel knew to be his FM communications antenna. Once the antenna had been hoisted some fifty feet up into the air, the men set about hammering its guywires firmly down into the rocky soil. He watched the strobe light on the crown of the antenna blink on for the first time, demonstrating that the apparatus was powered and ready to receive and transmit communications to other settlements on Ember.

Bootfalls crunching against gravely soil alerted Daniel to the approach of Spencer Arahanga, the overseer of the construction efforts. Despite being out in the field for the past four or five hours, Spencer's gray corporate polo and khaki trousers looked as clean and crisply-pressed as they did when he put them on in his bunk aboard the Crucis. The construction representative brushed off a bit of dirt on his shoulder that probably existed only in his imagination. Spencer did not at all strike Daniel as the sort of person who welcomed spending at least six weeks building pole barns on an uninhabited planet. How Comtois roped Mr. Arahanga into coming to Ember was beyond Daniel's reckoning.

"Mister Weyrich," greeted Spencer, "I am pleased to report that the essential facilities are complete. We have field tents pitched to house our construction teams while they build up the hangars and other buildings, the communications antenna is up and running, and the solar recharge station is operational."

"What about the fence?" Daniel asked.

"Ah, yes, the electric perimeter fence. The fence has been placed around the camp as you specified, but we are waiting for the recharge station to charge fully before powering the fence."

"Let's get that fence running now." Daniel stressed as he pushed off from the rock he was sitting on before setting out toward the perimeter fence that marked the boundary of his camp. Spencer followed on Daniel's heel as he cut across the nascent camp. They passed the metal frames of the hangars and warehouses that had already been assembled and raised up to the alien sky. Construction technicians swiped through their smart tablets to read the schematics for the kit-built metal buildings they were constructing. Further down, there were laborers towing a half-dozen pieces of heavy mining equipment into one of the camp's field tents for temporary cover with ATVs. Crates of supplies sat on giant pallets near the landing zone beside a small bicopter with its twin rotors still stowed from the dropship ride. Daniel paid the fortune's-worth of gear and equipment little mind, but Spencer could not help but give a double take at all of the supplies Daniel had ordered.

"Mister Weyrich, I can't help but ask, but what exactly do you intend to do with all of this equipment?" Spencer asked, gesturing to the crates and tents. "You have purchased enough mining equipment for a dozen start-ups and yet you seem to have no plan to prospect or mine for baltuskite. That isn't to say I'm doubting you; far be it from me to question a client's business model. However, I'd certainly appreciate knowing your intent so we at Comtois can better serve your needs."

"You're observant, Spencer. I ain't mining anything on this planet," Daniel affirmed. "But I know that Ember is a goddamn gold mine, and when people on Earth see the kind of money there is to be made on this planet, the starships are going to be chock full of people looking for their piece of the fortune here."

"My people are from South Africa back on Earth, Spencer. I dunno how much you know about the country's history. About four hundred years ago, there was a gold rush in South Africa in a place called the Witwatersrand. The mines only produced much gold for about sixty years, but in the process a town was founded there to give the miners and goldseekers a place to stay and trade. That town was Johannesburg, Spencer. And though the gold's been gone for hundreds of years, Johannesburg is still one of the biggest cities on Earth to this day."

"This," Daniel said as he gestured to the camp around him, "this is going to be Ember's Johannesburg. And if things go the way I plan, then these pole barns and metal shacks are just the tip of the iceberg for your company."

"We at Comtois would be delighted to see that happen," Spencer declared, his eyes widened by the tantalizing prospect of the fortunes to be had in building a proper city for Ember settlers.

"Then you and your crews will need to do exactly as I say, Spencer." Daniel said as he made his way to the very edge of the camp. "Starting with getting this fence up and running."