Blood and Ore

[Cutrax]

              Darkness covered the rocky landscape that stretched across the small moon. From a just a glance, it would seem like a useless place, worthless and offering no atmosphere to support life. However, Ulik Varden knew better. A few thousand feet into the crust lay an imense ore of Chanlon, a rare and valuable material used to manufacture the metal Phobium. Varden had manged to build a fairly large facility on the main concentration of Chanlon. He himself had no rights on the moon. But, this was the outer rim, and over the last twelve years, the facility had produced quite a paycheck for Varden and his employees. But, in order to maximize his profits, Varden relied on a fairly large slave population. His paid employees were the ones holding the guns at the miners' heads, forcing them under extreme conditions to be as productive as possible. The entire operation had managed to slip under the radar of any authoritive figure in space, and Varden planned to keep it that way. A well organized web of traders, smugglers, and buyers had made it virtually impossible to trace the mined Chanlon back to Varden. He had even managed to negotiate a route that funneled in supplies and mining equipment to the secure base. It was considered to be self-sufficent, and Varden had just made his way back to the mine. He checked in quite often, fearing that his men had cut themselves a larger payment, or that the mine wasn't operating to its full capacity. All had seemed well during his first few days on the base. Everything was going as he had hoped, and he was looking forward to shipping off another large shipment of Chanlon, for a large profit ofcoarse. But if only Varden hadn't been so worried about the financial part of the facility, and maybe checked on its upkeep instead. The sensor system that he had placed in the facility to warn of pirates or other threats to the base had been in much better condition 12 years ago. And their scans had become ignored over the last few years, it mistaking asteroids and space junk for enemy ships. So when a reading of an uknown vessel appeared on the screen, the technician shrugged it off and went back to his nap, as he had the other several reading of "ships" in the sector. But, this was no asteroid. Instead what Varden and his men would later find that day would be much, much worse than getting a cell sentence for illegal mining and slave labor. Even though the planet was already embraced in a cold night, there lay a greater darkness preparing to strike.....

[Cutrax]

                 Orlon Grant always found himself looking up into the void of the universe while on his patrol. The stars glowed brightly in the sky, much more beautiful than on any planet he was ever on before. Maybe it was because there was no atmosphere on this rock. He couldn't even remeber the name. Some survey droid had named it YU-56 or something like that. His eyes flicked back and fourth among the portrait above him. It got his mind of the boring as hell patrol he was always forced to do. The pay was good, but he would do anything for some action. Who would ever want to attack this base anyhow. Aside from the Chanlon, there was really no value. And its not like they had caused any problems since setting up the facility. Sure they had slaves, but who cares. Doesn't every big player in the galaxy have some. It didn't help that it was freezing cold, and Orlon didn't trust the readout on his light thermal armor. It said that it was 78 degrees inside the suit, but he highly doubted that. Prolly just another scam put on by his boss to make it seem like he truly gave a damn about his employees. As he looked up something caught his eye. There was a brightly glowing cluster of stars that he had never seen before. He watched in awe for a while before he realized that something was wrong. They kept growing bigger, and he couldn't help but think that they were moving towards him. He could barely pick out their large structures, and then came to the conclusion that they must be some sort of meterorite shower. At last they slammed into the ground a few hundred meters away, throwing rock and dirt into the air. The lights burned for a few minutes longer, but then faded.
                       
                   "zzz...sss..Hey! Orlan! you see that?...zsss.."

Orlan reached up and pressed a switch on the outside of his helmet.
             
                "Yeah, must be some kind of shower. Might be exciting, I'll go check it out."

         He gripped his rifle and began to step towards the scene, a tingling sensation in his chest over the excitement of something strange happening on his patrol, but his helmet then flashed in a brillant red. He looked down at his suit readings on his wrist and it warned him that his air tank was running low.

                       "Cancel that, I'm running low on air. I'll head back inside and get a rover to go check it out."

      With this Orlan turned around and headed to the facility only two hundred yards away.

****************************************************************************************
      SYSTEM: BARADA-SPDR SQUAD SE094
              *uploading to command system.....
    Status Report.....
                     Landing....Success
                     Target Alert....Minimal
                     Current Threats....1 Alerted Patrol
                             Anatomy....Humanoid
                             Threat Level....Minimal
                             Thermal Readings... 68
                              *checking.....
                     Updating Threats.....
                       Target changing coarse....
                       Currently moving towards facility....
                      Current Threats......None
                      *holding position.....................
                      Message From Command
                            *receiving......
                      CONTINUE WITH OPERATION
                        *command understood.....executing task