SET 017: Rojar VI Moon Charting, "Welcome To Lunar Industries"

Posted on 23 May 2013 @ 7:20am by
Edited on on 23 May 2013 @ 8:36pm

2,487 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 03 - Frontier
Location: Shuttlecraft Virginia, Rojar VI Space
Timeline: MD9 1230

ON:

Liyar lifted his tricorder up and scanned the dense gaping maw of the outer cavern they'd isolated using the feed to Virginia's trajectory map. "It is not a very deep cave, but it is wide. We should be able to take some mineral samples," Liyar said after another quick look over their readings. Images of caves falling and endless darkness chased him around in his head until he swatted them away like irksome flies. He was prepared, this time.

Maenad followed him into the cave. Because the entrance was large and near the top, the light from outside illuminated the cavern in a pale blue in the open and navy in deeper sections. Her helmet lights came on automatically in the reduced light, sending white beams fading off into the distance. She raised her tricorder as well. "It works a lot better in here," she observed. "High concentrations of dilithium thirty metres below us," she sighed, hoping to find none. "No lifeforms, either. Bacteria, though." Maenad snapped tricorder shut. "Liyar, do you really think the Federation will turn this place into an open pit mine just to get some meaningless dilithium?" she demanded, like he knew one way or the other.

"Yes," Liyar said simply, nodding inside of his helmet. The cave was enormous inside, with a huge ceiling where formations of stalactites and stalagmites rose and fell from all around them, creating prisms of blue, white and teal. Crystalline ice deposits hid clusters of formed rock all through the cave.

It infuriated her. "Why?" she spat. Where they were sitting on the side of the cliff would be erased. Massive machinery carving out the pristine beauty of an untouched world for absolutely no reason. The Federation had an abundance of resources; why this dilithium? Why this moon? She thought it was beautiful. In an instant, she was hit with a wave of a regret and self-loathing. She was why this moon would be reduced to rubble. Her scans, her studies, her samples, and her results. They would be taken by Saalm and then passed off to fatcats. Lirha would get a promotion and recognition, rising herself in the hierarchy of fatcat greed. And Maenad was now a part of it. She wasn't a scientist at all. She was a surveyor. She was being used, and she was now so angry that she could cry.

"Dilithium is not an infinite resource. It requires mining," he answered. It was a very beautiful world, he thought, but it wasn't a museum. Nature was meant to be harvested.

Slowly, through her helmet, she shook her head. She knew that dilithium was finite; did he take her for an idiot? The galaxy was vast, Federation space accounted for nearly a quarter of it. There were countless asteroid fields filled with dilithium, there were even more rocks orbiting dead or dying stars. Dilithium crystals were mostly wasted, carelessly. They could be recrystalised several times before they were used up. Why couldn't they put more research into that? Why couldn't they put more effort into finding a way to replicate them? A society that included a finite resource would not only destroy itself, but destroy the environment of who knew how many worlds. "Not this dilithium," she insisted.

"Ah. Other dilithium," Liyar replied dryly as he led them carefully through the center of the cave, ra-de'kutha held firmly in hand.

"I'm not joking," she scolded. "Why spend all these resources harvesting something that will eventually have to be replaced anyway, while in the process of getting it transforming entire landscapes?" Maenad asked. "Why not spend the same resources on research to make what we have more efficient? Why not spend the same time and effort on finding a way to replicate it, or at least trying to find a substitute that we can replicate?" She kicked a rock, sending it skipping along and echoing through the cavern. "You're not ashamed of what we're doing, Liyar?" she challenged, not relenting her opinion. "You think this is a good thing? That we're contributing to something great?" Maenad didn't pause long enough for him to answer. "Well, we're not."

"Maenad, you are blaming an entire scientific generation for not being smart enough," he admonished lightly. "Dilithium is what allows the majority of this entire quadrant to function as it does. Why would I be ashamed of it? If there were an alternate resource, we would use it."

"I am not," she replied. "We have no shortage of dilithium. We have enough to last us for hundreds of years. If all dilithium mining stopped today, we would not feel it for a very long time. We could stop. If we concentrated on finding a replacement, we would find one." That he felt nothing, not even a pang of regret, bothered her. "It is because of us that all of this will be destroyed," she raised her arms at her sides. "I'm not comfortable with that."

"Dilithium is an extremely rare resource. There are no dilithium fields, Maenad," he frowned at her. "I guarantee you if dilithium mining ceased today, within the next decade we would need more. Dilithium can only be resequenced so many times before it is worthless. It is a highly prized commodity. When we find it, we extract it. Until such a time that we do find a replacement, we mine dilithium. It is efficient, it is stable, and it allows the Federation to exist as we do today."

"Don't you think I know that?" she asked him, getting annoyed. "We need to find something else. On Earth, we used to rely on fossil fuels. It almost killed us, but we changed our ways before it was too late. It cost a lot to do, but it was worth it long-term. There is no dilithium on Earth, or on Vulcan, or any other major Federation worlds. The environmental impacts of mining are far from sight and even further from mind." Maenad audibly sighed. "You said so yourself, Liyar," she turned around and gripped him just above his elbows. "When were sitting on the cliff, you told me to look around because it was beautiful. Nobody has ever seen this before. And now it's all going to be completely destroyed. And it's going to be our fault." She shook him once, then let go. "I don't want to be part of that!"

He placed his hand over hers, an oddly sympathetic look on his face. "I know, and you are not wrong. I believe we should be finding ways to harvest the environment that allow it to continue to thrive, of course. But it is easy to say create an infinite energy resource, it is not easy to accomplish. Do you think if the Federation could rely on an infinite resource, we would waste time here? During the Dominion War, do you think if we had an alternative, we would not have used it? What alternative is there?"

"Well, I don't know, Liyar," she repeated. "That's why we need to find an alternative, or figure out how to replicate it. Pretty much anything can be replicated. It's just a matter of determining its precise matter composition. Just because it's hard does not mean that it shouldn't be done." Maenad opened her tricorder and checked the numbers. This mountain had within it several hundred thousands of tons of it. Sadly, she closed it again, and thought that she should destroy the evidence and report that they had found nothing. But, would Liyar go along with it, she didn't know.

Liyar caught the edge of Maenad's thoughts and shook his head. "We cannot, Maenad. You know we cannot. This is not done out of spite for nature. It is necessary to our function, to the life we live, and Starfleet is not the only beneficiary. There are whole colonies and planets, people who rely on the economic impact of dilithium trade. It would not be ethical to conceal this deposit."

"Nor is it ethical to destroy the environment," her tone was pointed. That he'd commented on her idea unsettled her, as she'd forgotten for a moment that he could pick up on her. She blinked several times, glancing around the blue of the cave. "We should head back, before it gets too dark."

Liyar looked around the cave for a moment, a pensive look on his face, and then inclined his head. He stepped closer to her and took hold of her arm, before pressing the commbadge at his chest and dematerializing them back near the shuttle's generator just outside the ramp. He walked through the forcefield and took off his helmet, his hair matted and stuck up all over the place underneath. He pulled off his gloves and waited for Maenad to follow him inside.

The beam-out caught her off guard. She thought they would walk back together, get to see the last bit of light anyone would ever see over the horizon, see the shuttle from their vantage point up on the side of the mountain. But by the time they'd rematerialised it was too late for anything to be said about it. Maenad followed him up the ramp into the shuttle after taking one last look outside, up at the eerie mountain tops. She pressed the button to close the ramp, and once was sealed she deactivated the forcefield and unsuited. She was sweaty too, and her bangs clung to her forehead like she'd been walking in the rain. She sat down on a bench that was attached to the wall and sighed, looking over at Liyar. She tried her best to look depressed about the few days left that this world had, but the sight of Liyar's straight face and crazy hair made her smile. She shook her head as she started undoing her boots. She took off the rest of the suit, put her skirt back on, then her tunic and jacket. As she started to head back into the cockpit, she stopped in front of him. "Your hair is messed up," she said somberly, then grinned. Without asking for permission, she reached up with both hands and tried her best to straighten it, but she was failing. It was standing up on his crown, and the idea of licking her palm to flatten it came and went. "And there's nothing I can do about it," she concluded. She looked at his lips and nose, ran her fingertips slowly down the side of his face, made for a kiss but stopped before she did, laughed at him with her green eyes, and she breathed against his skin, then pulled back, and abruptly returned to head back to her seat in the cockpit.

The ramp banged loudly behind Maenad as it closed over, eclipsing the angry, curled formations of rock and snow-dust behind them. Liyar sat down beside her and began to unlace his boots, setting them aside and standing to rid himself of the rest. He then pulled on his uniform jacket but didn't bother to zip it up. He watched as she tried to wrangle his hair unsuccessfully and when she reached up, his eyes tracked her as if she were - going to duck out of the way and suddenly leave, in the opposite direction, he realized belatedly. He took a single large step forward, capturing her wrist in his hand and pulling her back toward him before she could get too far away. Chest to chest, he regarded her nonchalantly, as if he were contemplating letting her go, but not quite sure. He stroked his thumb over the spot just above her eyebrow. "It is poor manners to tease," he said, amused.

"Am I teasing you?" she asked with a wry smile, her arm held at length. She gave a faux plaintive tug. "How?" She bit her bottom lip and made a single quiet laugh.

He merely looked at her. "I believe that you quite know," he said, spreading his hand over her wrist and the underside of her palm. He could feel her amusement and giddiness overlaying a profound sense of melancholy, juxtaposing frames flipping through his mind like a holovid projector. He ran the tips of his fingers through her hair, brushing it back from her face. "I will see what I can do about the moon," he finally relented quietly, raking his fingers through the hair at the back of her neck. "It may be possible to allocate it elsewhere, so it will not be mined."

Maenad let out a pleasant breath of air. He could be so kind sometimes, but she knew that Liyar could never actually have any influence over the fate of an entire moon, especially one as rich in minerals as this. With his hand still in her hair, she touched her fingertips against his cheek and brushed her nose against his. Then she kissed him once on the lips. "Let's see what else we can find," she whispered.

While his words meant very little to her, the matter was settled for him. It was his job, after all. One day, he decided, she would find this moon again. He backed her slowly through the shuttle until she hit the edge of the copilot's chair and sent her a wave of silent affection through his touch at her wrist. "Strap in," he reached above her head and pulled down the belt, fitting it in her hand and then moving to sit down in the pilot's chair. He ran through basic engine and preflight checks, and the shuttle's lights flicked on one by one as a low rumble hummed under their feet. Within a few minutes, they were ready for takeoff.

As night fell on the snow-covered world outside, the light inside the craft made it impossible to see beyond their reflections in the black of the windows. Maenad settled back in her chair, watching Liyar's preflight checks appear simultaneously on her screens. Her hands were on the arms of her chair as the shuttle began to lift off and she looked over at him while he maneuvered the controls. She was saddened by what would happen here, and was ashamed of her role in it, but Liyar kept her together just by being there. How the two of them managed to be the only ones on this mission, she did not know, but she was pleased. Genuinely. A warm smile spread on her face, and she turned to look forward. Gradually, as their altitude increased, the white sky faded into black, and finally into space.

TO BE CONTINUED...

OFF:

Lieutenant (JG) Maenad Panne
Chief Science Officer, SSC
USS Galileo

Lieutenant (JG) Liyar
Diplomatic Officer, VDF/SDD
USS Galileo

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