Star Force: Fiddlesticks (SF65) Read Free Page B

components with any unwanted material
heading back down the opposite side of the giant straw.
    The amounts collected were known almost instantly,
with Paul watching the feeds. Solari particles were a small minority within
stars, and it required a lot of sifting to get a significant amount of them, so
when no chori showed up he didn’t immediately label
their first try a failure. Rather he waited and watched, seeing a few trace
amounts of other solari popping up as it was separated from the hydrogen and
helium, which were both sent back down into the star a waste material.
    In the future those would have been claimed as well,
but the storage areas for the bulk materials weren’t yet activated. When they
were they’d fill up quickly, which would require regular cargo shipments off
the station, and as of yet no regular jumpship traffic was routed here so the Prometheus hadn’t bothered harvesting
any of the common elements.
    The analysis telemetry had registered 9 different
compounds so far, then a tenth was added as a bit of corovon was collected. It
was a tiny amount, but in its rare form. Most corovon Star Force collected was
bonded to other compounds and had to be separated from it on a subatomic level,
but most of the corovon in the star had already been separated due to the
destructive soup that made up the star…or at least the trace amounts this far
up. The deep core was another matter, but Star Force didn’t have the shield
strength to reach that far down as of yet.
    It took more than eight minutes before the first bit
of chori was reported, and just a tiny spec at that,
but another followed some 23 seconds later, with more bits and pieces coming up
the straw and into the Star Forge.
    A hologram of Henderson popped up beside the main
feeds in the command nexus where Paul was watching from and the trailblazer
mentally flipped the image to a headshot rather than a full body image.
    “A few hits,” Paul mentioned.
    “How long the plume stays within the radius of the
collection field is in question, but if this saturation level persists a number
of days we’ll have enough out of this single detonation. If not, we’ll need to
reposition and repeat.”
    “I’ve got two more of similar yield. If it takes more
than that we’re going to have variations to deal with.”
    “Keep your fingers crossed then. In the meantime head
back on over and we’ll troubleshoot the rest of our headaches, unless you need
to be elsewhere?”
    “I’m going to stick around a while. I’ll be over
within the hour.”
    Henderson nodded, then his hologram cut out.
    Paul glanced at the updating collection numbers again,
seeing a steady trickle of chori being brought up and
wondering how soon the subsurface currents were going to sweep it aside and
outside of the filament perimeter.

 
    Paul stood on the floor of a huge chamber, or rather
the lack of one. The artificial gravity was working, but everything over his
head was empty space inside the Prometheus …for
17 miles.
    He looked up, unable to see the ceiling in the
darkened distance and knowing that this area was reserved for future
construction. The outer shell of the Star Forge was complete, as was a lot of
the interior, but there were voids such as this that had atmosphere but little
else on the 94 mile long mining station. It’d taken a hell of a lot of
resources to build it, but now that it was here those materials were going to
be returned in the form of stellar mining resources from now through infinity.
At the moment there was only a negligible trickle of exports, but that would
gradually grow and as it did so would the station’s interior.
    At full strength it was estimated that at least a crew
of 200,000 would be needed, but the Star Forge had been designed to house
upwards of a million with ease, and areas such as this could be fitted with
additional residential areas if necessary. How the Prometheus would eventually turn out was unknown, allowing for the
adaptation